Swim Through My Veins
by ficinthefinder
Summary: "In the end, the one you'll want will not be Asami but the drugs." Akihito has been threatened with being drugged up and sold as a sex slave. What if it happened? In the aftermath, Akihito struggles with the physical and psychological damage and questions his future with Asami. Can Akihito rebuild his life and will there still be a place in it for Asami? Can Asami keep Aki safe?
1. Chapter 1

*Please note that this story contains depictions of graphic violence, drug withdrawal and unsafe sex practices. While there are no graphic depictions of rape, rape is referenced throughout the story.*

This is my first Finder story. Not sure how long it will be or how sexy. But if you like angst, you'll find a lot of it here. Please let me know what you think!

 **Chapter 1**

The room was reached by a narrow back staircase, grimy walls a lurid shade of green, lit only by a single naked bulb on the upper landing. The three men pushed their way past the protesting owner of the house and up the stairs. At the top, the chipped panel door was locked but gave way to Suoh's furious kick and the men were assaulted with the reek of unwashed bodies and the vinegar smell of heroin. Suoh fumbled along the wall but found no switch. In the poor light from the landing, he could just make out the dark humps of bodies on the floor. There was almost no reaction that he could see or hear to his violent means of entry, only a low undercurrent of soft moaning. Reaching into his coat, he pulled out a small but powerful flashlight but before he could turn it on, it was jerked from his grasp.

"Boss, let me—" he started but was cut off.

"Move."

Asami flicked on the flashlight and stepped into the room, choking on the smell. This was by far the worst of the shitholes they had searched and some small part of him hoped he didn't recognize anyone among the bodies slumped pathetically along the walls. Even if it meant starting from scratch, it might be better than finding him here. Still, he had to look, had to be sure.

Methodically, he started to the left of the door and worked his way around the room, shining the light into the faces of the miserable things huddled on the floor. Boy after boy, thin, dirty, ranging in ages he preferred not to think about. Some of them squinted against the glare; one or two threw up a hand to block the light; a few cringed, curling tighter into themselves. None of them spoke, and he was glad. If they had, he would have had to acknowledge they were human, all of these boys. In that moment, he could only focus on one boy. The one he had lost.

They had been searching nearly two months, aided by Fei Long, but even with his connections on the mainland, they couldn't possibly reach into every brothel in Asia. Leads had been few. The last concrete evidence had been five weeks ago, shaky cellphone video from an unnamed informant showing a boy who could have been Akihito being hustled out of a car by two nondescript men with baseball hats pulled down over their faces. That video had sent them to Macau for a month of fruitless searching until a tip had led them here, to the back alleys of Dongguan.

Asami kept moving, boy by boy. Once or twice, he stopped to turn a face up so he could get a better look, all with that same glassy-eyed stare, pupils blown by the dark and drugs. They let him hold them by the jaw, unprotesting, and fell back silently when he released them, dead to the indignity of being inspected.

In the far corner, one of the boys lay prone on the bare, blackened linoleum floor and didn't respond when Asami nudged his hip with the toe of his shoe and Asami left it at that. The boy with his shorn, black hair wasn't Akihito.

Back out on the landing, Asami returned the flashlight to Suoh.

"He's not here."

Laughter crackled up from the bottom of the staircase where the owner stood, his fat arms crossed over his belly.

"So you didn't find what you were looking for?" he shouted over the noise of the music pounding from the bar below them. "I told you we don't have no Japanese here!"

Asami jerked his head at his men and they filed down the stairs behind him. The owner stopped laughing when Asami stopped in front of him but stood his ground and tried to brazen it out.

"You bust up my place! I pay plenty of money for protection from thugs like you. You wait until Shen Jei hears how some big asshole yakuza come in here and break up my place looking for his little whore!"

Only those few most familiar with Asami would have picked up on the minute play of muscles that flickered across the disciplined planes of his face. And only those few would understand what it meant. The other man had given himself away.

With a barely perceptible flick of his eyes, Asami signaled to Suoh, who grabbed the brothel owner by the arms, dragged him—heavy as he was—out of the stairwell and forced him hard onto one of the metal chairs in the empty reception room. Inaba, the other bodyguard, produced a pair of handcuffs and chained the owner to the chair.

Asami pulled out his cellphone and punched up a contact list. The call was almost immediately answered.

" _Fei Long_ ," the voice on the other end said.

"What do you know about a two-bit Dongguan gangster named Shen Jei?" Asami asked without preamble. There was a second of silence before Fei Long answered.

" _Where are you_?"

Asami gave him the address of the brothel.

" _Give me five minutes_ ," came the reply.

It took ten. Asami stood, never shifting the cold, focused fury of his gaze from the now sweating brothel owner, who looked nervously away, even when Asami's cell rang again.

"Yeah?"

" _He's there_."

"What?"

" _Akihito. Asami, they're holding Akihito there_."

"Impossible," Asami said tightly. "We searched every room."

The owner's head swiveled around, almost involuntarily.

"Or did we?" In one swift, fluid motion, Asami pulled his gun from its holster, jamming the end of the barrel against the other man's head, directly between his eyebrows. "Where is he? Where are you hiding him?"

"I'm not hiding nobody!"

The gun was drawn back and came down with a crack against the side of the owner's head.

"Where—is—Takaba—Akihito?" Each word punctuated with another blow.

The man's head lolled crazily on his shoulders, blood spidering over his face. Still he smiled, his teeth grotesquely red.

"You looked," he wheezed, "and you didn't see him."

Another skull-splitting blow sent blood spraying over the wall.

"I will tear this place down board-by-board and burn the rubble with you buried in it! Tell me where he is!"

" _Asami!_ " Fei Long's voice called sharply out of the phone." _Is it possible you're only looking for a blond_?"

The mask slipped then. Gods! No, it was impossible! Red, green, purple, surely he would have recognized Akihito whatever color his hair. Even black, like the boy on the floor upstairs, the unconscious one who hadn't opened his eyes.

"Watch him," he ordered Inaba.

He took the steps three at a time, Suoh on his heels, back to the nightmare room at the top of the house. Even with the door wide open, none of the terrified boys had moved. Asami strode past them and dropped to his knees beside the inert body in the corner. Suoh came up behind him and turned the flashlight on the boy. He was curled on his side with his face to the wall, dressed in a filthy t-shirt and cheap sweat pants, his feet bare. His black hair had been close-cropped by a careless hand, ragged and uneven.

With infinite tenderness, Asami put a hand on the boy's shoulder and slowly rolled him onto his back. The boy's head flopped lifelessly to the side and Asami felt it like a blow to the chest. Behind him, he heard Suoh's gasp.

"Shit," Suoh said.

Asami couldn't speak, all air driven from his lungs by the force of that revelatory blow. It was him. Gods, it was him. And he looked half dead, his skin unnaturally pale, blue smudges like bruises around his eyes, cheeks gaunt, the bones of his arms standing out in graphic detail under wasted tissue.

When he was able to take in enough air to drive speech, Asami smacked Akihito's cheek with careful measure.

"Takaba," he said. "Hey, Takaba." But got no response.

"Is he breathing?" Suoh asked.

Asami trailed his hand over Akihito's jaw and down the side of his neck, his fingertips picking up the faint burr of Akihito's pulse and drawing it through his own body like a tremor.

"He's alive."

Another slightly sharper smack.

"Come on, kid. Open your eyes."

He needed to see, needed to know if that same shadow that had numbed the souls of the other boys had staked a claim here.

"Akihito!" The word rang with a familiar, sharp command that even the obstinate brat usually responded to. He had to, even now, even like this. The bruised eyelids quavered and moved slowly, maddeningly, as though they were too heavy to lift. Behind them, black pupils drowned hazel, and if that fierce light was still there, it couldn't penetrate that darkness. Akihito stared unseeingly past Asami.

"Akihito!" Asami gave him a little shake. "Look at me!"

But he only succeeded in shaking a wordless moan out of the boy, and the heavy lids fell back into place.

Asami pulled Akihito's left arm across his body, turning it to expose the soft flesh in the bend of his elbow to the light from the flashlight, the blue marks of needle tracks like poison darts to his own heart.

With one arm under his shoulders and one under his knees, Asami lifted Akihito off the floor. He knew the heft of this body so well, had carried it this way too many times not to be knifed through by the change, how light it was, how pronounced the bones against his arms, how utterly lacking in resistance. The knife lodged hilt-deep in his throat until he thought he would choke on it.

"Come on." He somehow managed a guttural growl and followed by Suoh, strode out of the room and down the stairs, Akihito a dirty, limp bundle in his arms.

"Inaba!" Asami barked when they reached the reception room. "Contact the airport. I want the plane ready to go in half an hour. Then call Kirishima and give him our ETA. Tell him to have Dr. Nagato on standby."

The bundle in his arms tensed and a thin hand reached up and closed over the lapel of his coat.

"Asami?"

A hoarse whisper he could barely hear.

"It's okay, Takaba," he said in a voice neither Suoh nor Inaba recognized. "I'm taking you home."

Akihito's head turned weakly back and forth. His lips moved but no sound came out.

"What was that?" Asami pulled the boy closer. "I can't hear you."

Eyes closed tight with effort, Akihito drew a shaking breath.

"The others…" His voice was barely audible, carried on a tremulous gasp of air. "Can't leave them."

With five breathless words, Akihito dropped the weight of the boys in the upstairs room across Asami's shoulders, but Asami was built to carry far more than that, and those five words told him that the light he was looking for still burned somewhere inside this broken boy.

"Inaba," he said again. "Call Fei Long. Tell him we have Takaba but there are about a dozen boys here that need attention. If they can't or don't want to go home, he can at least find them safer work."

"You think you just gonna walk out of here, you sonofabitch?" the owner snarled. "You don't take what's mine, bought and paid for!"

Asami smiled—with all the warmth of a Siberian winter.

"You really don't know who I am, do you?"

The owner brazened it out to the last.

"I know you're a dead man," he spat. "You and that piece of nothing you came for. He probably gonna die anyw—"

Suoh silenced the man with a solid punch to the side of his head.

"Inaba," Asami said, this time with studied courtesy. "Please also tell Fei Long we'll need cleaners."

"Cleaners?" Inaba asked. "What for?"

"Because Suoh is going to blow this rat's brains out. Right now."

Suoh knew an order when he heard one, put the barrel of his gun against the owner's temple and fired. Asami stood, watching the man's gore run down the wall with icy satisfaction until he became aware that Akihito was jerking against him. The kid had never had gotten used to seeing someone shot in front of him, no matter how much they'd been begging for it.

"It's okay. We're going."

Asami swept down another set of stairs and through the shabby, badly lit nightclub on the first floor. If anyone noticed the tall, dark, well-dressed man carrying the skinny, dirty boy and followed by a hulking brute with a blond buzz cut, no one seemed to care. And none of them would have been able to tell from the tall man's impassive face that the boy in his arms was—in that moment—his fragile tether to sanity.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

The shaking started before they reached the condo. The flight back to Tokyo had taken five hours after a delay of nearly two and now more than an hour in traffic from the airport. Not knowing when Akihito's last hit had been—or even what he'd been given, though the surest guess was heroin from what he was able to describe—it was tough to judge when the symptoms would kick in.

He had been so close to unresponsive in the brothel and in the car on the way to the airport that there had been a very real fear that he'd been overdosed. That was the razor edge unpredictability of heroin, especially with whatever cheap shit that brothel owner had been pumping into those boys. Even a veteran junkie was only operating on blind faith in the strength of what he'd been sold.

But Akihito had come back to himself on the jet, the warm soft fog of the drug falling away like the cloud cover as the jet climbed; and for a few hours it was enough, hurtling through clear air, the confused jumble of days he had stopped counting tumbling into the past, the dark emphatic solidity of Asami next to him, anchoring him in open space.

"You came for me again."

Asami looked at him in mild surprise.

"I told you I always will."

There was both comfort and dread in the word "always," but he shied away from it, turning instead to the thought that Fei Long's prediction had not come true. He had been made to beg for his next hit but nothing— _nothing_ had come close to the intense flood of answered longing that had swept through him when he had felt Asami's arms lift him out of that black hole.

He looked at the man seated next to him No, he had never stopped wanting Asami.

Asami read the raw, open need in the boy's eyes, and his own face tightened with a feral hunger Akihito knew well, and he was pulled into one of Asami's invasive, possessive kisses, the kind that was not content with mere physical contact but sought to drag part of Akihito's soul away with it. Gods, he had never wished for death, even in the blackest of those days, but if he had to die, he hoped it would be like this, devoured alive like this.

But his body could not follow him. Still sick and weak, he collapsed bonelessly against Asami's chest

"I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"Why are you apologizing?" Asami's deep baritone rumbled against Akihito's ear.

Too much to even begin to list.

"This," Akihito said. "All of this. Remember what you said to me after Hong Kong? I made you do all of this?"

He felt Asami shrug.

"And you said I was in your debt then." Akihito closed his eyes and laughed a little, half joking, half afraid to say what he was thinking. "What am I in to you for now?"

"Lifetimes," Asami said. "You owe me lifetimes. Fortunate for you, little cat, that you have more than one to give me."

If part of him still rebelled at the idea of owing body and soul to Asami, it could not fight against the immediate need for security that the man's presence represented. And it could not even quiet the voice that said no, it was more than security. The warmth, the familiar scent of the man's skin, the stringent taste of smoke on his tongue filled a less easily classified need, and Akihito was tired of fighting. He'd tucked his head under Asami's chin and let everything else go.

Now huddled in the back of the limo, his body taken by tremors, a strange battle was taking place, playing across Akihito's face and tormenting his eyes in a way Asami could hardly bear to watch, knowing it was only the opening salvo of a long war.

If it was just a fight between fear and determination, he wouldn't have worried. He'd seen Akihito win that one over and over. This time, though, Akihito was up against an opponent that Asami knew fought dirty, that whispered things you needed to hear and drew you on to places you never knew you needed to go. The kid got in and out of scrapes on a heedless, bullheaded bravery all his own. Would it be enough now?

He reached across the seat and pulled Akihito into his lap as he had numberless times before, this time drawing a suppressed grunt from the boy in place of his usual stream of noisy arguments and blustering curses. In his knowledge of this war—as a general and never as a foot soldier—Asami understood the insidious weapons of the enemy and how they would turn Akihito's body against itself. His touch, he knew, was probably already uncomfortable and would become unbearable after a while, but he could not help himself. The need was too great. It was a need completely free of lust unless it was the insane lust of the obsessed for the obsession too long lost. Seeing was not enough. He had to know through the simple intimacy of skin and the warmth and weight of the boy against him, his own hit, his own drug, the misery of his withdrawal ending as Akihito's began.

The dark hair cut so short didn't help this feeling that the Akihito he held was an illusion or could slip away from him in any number of ways. It was the outward mark that someone else had altered what was his, prickly against the palm of his hand when it had been soft strands that once slipped yieldingly through his fingers. Yes, hair would grow and the color could be corrected but what else had been changed that could not be changed back?

The limo pulled up in front of Asami's condo building. Kirishima was waiting on the steps and hurried to open the door. If he didn't gasp out loud when he saw Akihito, it was out of the discipline of years, but his face gave him away.

"I know," Akihito said, hastily manufacturing a smile. "You're wondering what you're going to do now that you can't make dumb blond jokes about me."

"No, it's just—" Kirishima was totally caught off guard. "I'm glad you're back, Takaba."

"That's pretty good," Akihito said. "You almost sound like you mean it."

He slid off Asami's lap and pulled himself out of the car by the door handle. But when he stepped onto the sidewalk, his knees seemed to be made of jelly and his legs threatened to fold up under him. Kirishima had to grab him to keep him from collapsing in a heap, and this time, he did gasp at the feel of the painfully thin arm beneath his hand.

Two powerful arms caught Akihito behind the knees and around the shoulders as Asami lifted him almost effortlessly.

"I can walk," Akihito protested, heat flooding his cheeks. It was early morning and the sidewalk was bustling. He heard a woman giggle into her hand.

"Why bother?" Unconcerned, Asami sailed up the steps with his mortified burden

Inside, they passed the old doorman, who accepted their arrival with almost bored equanimity. He had, after all, seen Akihito carried in conscious, unconscious, drunk, fighting and now like a bride. It was nothing new, really. No reason for the boy to bury his face in his hands.

In the elevator, Akihito squirmed, not so much out of mortification as out of a vague, spreading discomfort.

"Seriously, Asami," he said. "Put me down."

"No room," Asami said, which was patently ridiculous but Akihito recognized Asami's warped idea of humor. "Is Nagato here?" he asked Kirishima.

"Yes, Asami-sama. Also, Chao Wa Lon has agreed—"

"Not now."

Akihito felt the muscles of Asami's arms tense. Chao Wa Lon wasn't a name he recognized. If it was business, it was odd for Kirishima to bring it up in the elevator, but probably it was urgent. How much time had Asami lost, looking for him? He couldn't think about it. He could feel his mind beginning to be pulled away by his body, by the mounting aches and jitters that would bloom into real pain and the inability to be still and to him on the floor, on his knees, begging…

Not this time. He was here, he was safe. The heroin had been for escape. There was nothing he needed to escape here.

There was a soft ding and the elevator doors slid open with quiet efficiency. Kirishima opened the penthouse door and Akihito was home. For a moment, the force of it—the cool, clean, elegant lines of Asami's apartment, the sanity and order—threatened to break him at last. He choked on a sob.

"All right?" Asami looked down at him.

"Yeah. Just…put me down, okay? Please?"

But Asami slipped off his shoes and carried Akihito through to the living room, where a small woman in her early fifties was waiting, seated on the white leather couch. Her dark hair was scraped back into a bun and black framed glasses magnified large, observant eyes. She wore a white lab coat over a sleek blue dress and an air of contained impatience. She stood up when she saw them and bowed.

"Asami-sama."

"Dr. Nagato, thank you for waiting," Asami said. "You remember Takaba, of course."

Akihito was deposited at last on the sofa. He knew Dr. Nagato, who ran a private clinic Asami funded and in a manner of speaking, cleaned up workplace injuries sustained by Asami's men and occasionally Asami himself. Akihito had been taken to see her after a bad beating by some street punks, out of an excess of caution on Asami's part. He'd been a little unnerved by her steady gaze and her calm way of asking questions that cut right through his bullshit. He could see why Asami valued her. He just wasn't sure he had the stamina to deal with her right then.

"Of course." She perched on the coffee table in front of Akihito and opened a large, gray plastic box that served as her medical bag. "Kirishima filled me in on the basics. I'm just going to do a quick assessment, take your temperature, your blood pressure. Are you feeling up to that, Takaba?"

"I'm not feeling up to arguing with you about it," Akihito said, "so it's your lucky day."

"Indeed." She pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and held up a thermometer. "Put this under your tongue and stop talking."

She slipped the thermometer into Akihito's mouth but he pulled it out and glared at Asami.

"Don't even say it!"

"What?" Asami raised his eyebrows.

"I know what you're thinking, that she's asking the impossible."

"I did say _stop_ talking, didn't I?" Dr. Nagato put the thermometer back into Akihito's mouth and clamped his jaw shut with her hand. "You're warm. A low-grade fever is normal. The perspiration is normal, too."

He hadn't even noticed he was sweating until she said it. Now he realized that the clean white shirt he'd been given on the plane was sticking to his arms uncomfortably.

"Your eyes will water, too. Sneezing and yawning are common. How long has he been shooting up?" she asked Asami.

"Mot sooting," Akihito mumbled around the thermometer. "Forthed!"

"We're not sure," Asami said. "He'd been missing for seven weeks."

Akihito looked up at Asami with a start that Dr. Nagato did not miss. The thermometer beeped and she pulled it out and looked at it.

"Thirty-eight point two." Dr. Nagato put the thermometer back in the box and got out her stethoscope. "Do you know when you were given the first injection?"

He shook his head.

"What do you remember?" she asked as she put the tips of the stethoscope in her ears.

But that question was too much. His heart hammered in his chest and his vision started doing funny things, lights sparking behind his eyes. Too many things. He remembered too many things. In front of him, Dr. Nagato seemed to be floating, her face coming in and out of focus. He closed his eyes and tried to stamp down the nausea.

"It's all right," she said. "It's not that important."

She put the stethoscope back in the box without using it, got up and went over to Asami, who had been watching, his hand on his chin.

"What's wrong?" he asked under his breath. "Why did you stop?"

"Look," she said. "It's obvious he's malnourished and dehydrated and he's heading into full blown opiate withdrawal. He's also obviously traumatized. I don't want to stress him more than I have to. I'm sure—" Here she rose unconsciously on her toes, as if the extra inch or two could make her seem more threatening to the man who loomed nearly two full heads over her. "—there is more going on here than Kirishima has told me. Maybe things I need to know, maybe things I don't. Some things I can guess."

"You know enough to treat him," Asami said tightly.

"Do I?"

"Yes."

She stared him down a moment longer.

"We've been down this road once before, haven't we?" she asked and Asami's eyes widened in alarm. "You know what he's up against. Heroin alone is bad enough but if there's something else—"

"He will be all right," Asami cut her off.

"You thought that the last time." She was pushing it, she knew, but she liked the boy who was now curled up, trembling on the sofa. There was something in his eyes that brought out what she refused to think of as a maternal side.

"This is different," Asami said. "He is different."

Yes, he was. It was what had caught at her. How, she wondered, had he ended up here, with a man like Asami? Not that Dr. Nagato disliked Asami. She respected him, certainly. But Takaba had to fit into his world about as well as a boisterous puppy at a board meeting. She sighed.

"All right. You know the drill." She went back to her box and took out a couple of small white paper envelopes. "Loperamide for diarrhea," she said and Akihito groaned. "Amitriptyline might help him sleep. It will help with the leg cramps. I don't want to give him anything else unless we have to."

She reached into the box again and pulled out a length of rubber and a syringe.

"I know the last thing you want to see right now is a needle," she said when Akihito blanched, "but I need to draw some blood. No, don't get up. Just turn onto your back."

But she couldn't find a vein in either arm and finally had to go into the back of his right hand, which hurt like hell. Akihito flung his left arm over his face and drew a hissing breath between his teeth.

"I'm sorry," she repeated. "I know it hurts. Just relax your hand now."

She yanked the strip of rubber off his arm, withdrew the needle and taped a cotton ball over the back of his hand. He watched her, his eyes enormous, hoping that she would put the tears down to the watery eye thing she was talking about.

"You're looking for HIV," he said quietly.

"Yes," she said. "Among other things. I'm going to leave a list of symptoms of other STDs here. If you experience any of them, I want you to contact me immediately. Will you do that?"

He nodded.

She crouched down by the sofa, on eye level with him and regarded him for a long moment, her myopic eyes searching his face.

"Is there anything else you need me to look at?" she asked carefully. "Anywhere else you've been hurt?"

Of course, she knew, Akihito thought. Asami's private physician was no dummy. It was kind of her to let him make the call, though, as to how much he wanted to admit.

"No, it's okay," he said. "I'm okay."

He smiled at her to reassure her, but he didn't know how his own smile affected people, how it cut right through her pragmatic heart so that she had to turn away and busy herself, stuffing things back into her box.

"I should have the results of the blood test in a few days," she said, "but we'll need to test every two weeks for three months and again at six months before we can say for certain. It goes without saying but I'm going to say it anyway—"

"Ugh," Akihito said, knowing what was coming.

"Yes. No unprotected sex until then."

He put his hand over his face again and so he didn't see the look she threw at Asami.

"Not," she said, "that you're going to feel like doing much of anything for the next few days." She reached up and pulled his hand away and he saw that her brows were turned up in concern. "It's going to be rough, Takaba. You're going to think you're dying, but you won't die. You can do this."

"I've got weeks of you sticking needles into my hands to look forward to," he said. "Why would I want to miss that?"

Dr. Nagato closed up her box and stood, smoothing the skirt of her dress.

"Try to get him to eat something, if he can keep it down," she said to Asami, "and get as much liquid into him as you can. I'll come back after clinic hours to see how he's doing."

When she had gone, Asami went to the kitchen, poured a glass of orange juice and brought it to Akihito.

"Sit up and drink this," he said.

Akihito didn't think it was a good idea but he pushed himself up and took the glass from Asami.

"Those other boys," he said, staring at the glass in his hands. "Can you get them out of there?"

"Fei Long has already picked them up." Asami reached for a pack of cigarettes on the table, shook one out and lit it. "He's none too pleased about it and sent me a rather strongly worded text."

"Can I see it? What did he say?"

"Basically asking what is he supposed to do with twelve pretty boys."

Akihito chuckled. "I dare you to text him back and tell him to start his own boy band."

A smile quirked the corner of Asami's mouth. "I did say it was a question I certainly never expected to hear from him."

But Akihito didn't laugh.

"Thirteen of us in just that one house," he said. "And how many other places like that are there, just in that city? And then how many other cities?"

"Akihito—" Asami began.

"I know," Akihito cut him off. The juice didn't look at all appealing, but it might wash the sour taste out of his mouth. He tipped the glass up and drank half of it in one go.

"Take it easy," Asami said.

"What did she mean, the doctor?" Akihito asked. "She said you'd been down this road before. Did she mean you—"

"No." Asami took a long drag on his cigarette, holding the smoke in for the maximum nicotine hit. "I've seen other people go through withdrawal, that's all."

That's all. Akihito knew there was more to it than that but he also knew Asami would only tell him what he wanted to tell him. Like for instance if he asked who those other people were, he could almost guarantee a change of subject. And maybe he didn't want to know anyway. Didn't want to know how it had turned out, where they were now. His stomach contracted painfully. The juice had been a bad idea. He wrapped his arms around his middle and bent over, a helpless, embarrassing little moan escaping him.

"Hang on."

Asami got up, went back to the kitchen and returned with a deep plastic dish basin. He sat next to Akihito and held the basin while Akihito vomited. The juice, the little bit of miso, rice and fish he'd managed to eat on the plane all came back up in a disgusting orange mélange. Before he could even pour words over his humiliation, his stomach twisted again and another orange stream hit the basin. Three more times he retched until nothing came out and he felt he was being torn across the middle and his little moans were full-out cries. Through it all, Asami sat next to him, calm and quiet, showing no sign of revulsion or pity. Nothing fazed him, Akihito thought. He doubled over and wept.

Asami got up again and came back with a warm, wet cloth and cleaned Akihito's face and hands and eased him down on the sofa. Akihito curled into himself, his face buried in his arms, and shook.

"I'm afraid," he mumbled.

"That has never stopped you," Asami said.

Akihito turned and looked at Asami with an expression of puzzled surprise that lanced through Asami's gut.

It didn't show. Akihito certainly didn't see it, but Asami felt every contortion of muscle, every stab of pain as if it was his own and thought that Dr. Nagato didn't have a clue what she was talking about. He had never been down this particular road, not watching Akihito suffer like this. It was entirely new and unwelcome terrain. What burned a hole in the center of his chest was the knowledge that the trip had been deliberately arranged for him. And Akihito was collateral damage.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading this far! Please let me know what you think.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

He called it the sweat box, the cupboard under the stairs, not big enough to stand up in and once the low, thick door was closed, stifling and pitch black. The sound of feet pounding the stairs overhead echoed like thunder in the enclosed space. Akihito wrapped his arms around his knees and rocked back and forth. It wasn't the dark or the claustrophobia. It was the need already creeping through his veins and spreading into the nerve endings and the knowledge that no matter how much he didn't want it, no matter how much he tried to hold back, he'd be flinging himself against that door and begging soon. He tried to pull his mind away, to cut himself off from the reality of burning flesh and aching muscle, but his traitorous body dragged him back and pinned him down and made him feel the scream of every nerve.

When the door finally opened and a rough hand grabbed him by the back of the shirt and dragged him out into the light, he was so sick, he couldn't stand and collapsed in a heap on the floor. The man standing over him held a hypo and a narrow rubber tube.

"This what you want? Huh?"

 _No, I don't want it,_ Akihito wanted to say but instead drew a shuddering breath and nodded mutely.

"You gotta tell me how much you want it."

"Please."

"Not good enough. You gotta tell me you're gonna stop acting like a little shit and do what you're told."

Akihito couldn't handle his own shame and buried his face in his arms.

"I'll do whatever you want," he mumbled.

The man crouched next to him and tied the piece of rubber around his arm.

"You bite another customer," he grumbled, "and I'm gonna cut off more than your hair. You hear me? Look at me! You're more trouble than you're worth!"

Akihito twisted his head and saw that the man bending over him wasn't the brothel owner but Asami.

" _You're more trouble than you're worth_."

Asami pulled his gun and pointed it at Akihito's head…

Akihito sat up with a jolt. For a moment, he was disoriented. The room was dark and quiet and to his left, floor-to-ceiling windows opened on the broad panoply of Tokyo, lit by night. Asami's room. He remembered now, protesting, worried he'd throw up or worse in Asami's bed, but Asami had pointed out with a shrug that Akihito's room was too far from the bathroom to be practical.

 _Ought to just drag a futon out into the hall_ , Akihito thought, realizing with a moan that the sheets under him were soaked with perspiration. He rubbed his hands over his face. He was so tired, but every time he managed to nod off, some perverse part of his brain would dig up the ugliest bits of the past two months, the things he was trying hardest to put out of his mind, as if to poke him with them and say "Remember this? Remember how horrible it was? There's only one way to truly forget."

So tired, but his legs were screaming with a bizarrely dull kind of pain, demanding he move, the muscles seizing and jerking on their own. And then a viscous urgency low in his belly sent him stumbling, kicking off the damp sheets that twined around his ankles, fleeing to the bathroom.

When he was emptied—he felt—of everything, he crawled across the tiles into the shower stall, turned on the water and sat under the stream, pajamas and all. It was the first thing that had felt good since Asami had kissed him on the plane. He sat there until the water began to cool and then hauled himself to his feet.

On the hook outside, he found a thick bathrobe that he knew hadn't been there before. He stripped off his sodden pajamas, shrugged into the bathrobe and leaned forward to stare at himself in the mirror and was thrown off balance again. He had to brace both hands against the mirror and let his head hang for a moment until everything stopped spinning. He looked again, searching for something familiar, something of who he thought he was, not this pale, big-eyed, dark-haired scarecrow. Long, trembling fingers reached up and tugged mournfully at his shorn hair, as though they could pull it back to the way it had been.

"I can get someone in here to fix the color for you, as soon as you're up for it."

He turned to see Asami behind him in the doorway, watching impassively. But Akihito had learned to read the other signs that gave away what Asami's face would not. The slight rise of his shoulders, quickened cadence of speech and the barest clench and release of his fist on the doorframe spoke to the contained craziness that was Asami's alone and that few other people suspected. Akihito knew that extraordinary control was being exercised to make it seem as though Asami was offering him a choice, and the first real grin since this whole thing started spread across Akihito's face.

"Yeah, okay," he said. "I was thinking maybe blue this time."

"Come and eat something."

And _that_ could not be interpreted as anything other than an order. Asami's self-control extended only so far. With an effort, Akihito pushed himself away from the mirror.

"And I can never decide," he said, trailing Asami to the kitchen, aware of a slightly hysterical edge to his own voice. "Should I dye the rug to match the drapes? What do you think?"

Asami pivoted abruptly.

"No one touches the rug but me."

A flare of light in Asami's eyes offset the absurdity of his words.

"That might be the most ridiculous thing you've said to me yet."

Asami stared down at him and Akihito found himself counting, trying to hold that gaze as if it was nothing, as if nothing had changed, as if nothing had happened, as if nothing was wrong.

Asami's hand came up and rested gently against his cheek.

"You don't have to try so hard," he said.

Gods, that warmth! Akihito leaned into that broad hand, but as it trailed down over his jaw and along his neck, instead of warmth it felt like thousands of tiny needles cutting minute trails in his skin. He flinched away.

"Ah! I'm sorry," he mumbled, feeling heat and nausea rise.

"Don't be," Asami said. "I know everything hurts right now. Go sit on the sofa. I'll bring the food in there."

Akihito did as he was told and by the time Asami came carrying a tray, the heat had receded and he was shivering with cold. That had been the pattern for two days now, hot and then freezing cold, so very tired but unable to sleep or sit still, aching in every joint and the never ending, mortifying trips to the bathroom. And underneath everything, like broken glass under his skin, slivering his brain, the sharp edge of a voice that never stopped hissing "You know how to fix this."

Asami put the tray down on the table and went and got a duvet from the cupboard and tucked it around Akihito.

"Eat something," he said.

It was all very bland, food chosen in the hopes it would stay down, but the smell of even this inoffensive fare turned Akihito. He did the best he could and then lay back down, drawing the duvet around him until only his eyes and hair were visible. Across from him, Asami sat in the armchair and lit a cigarette.

"Shouldn't you be at work?" Akihito asked. "You've lost a lot of time because of me."

Asami gave him a sly, tilted smile.

"Are you worried about my bottom line?"

Akihito groaned.

"With your warped sense of humor, I can never tell what's a double entendre and what isn't."

"It's all in your mind." Asami blew a trail of smoke over his face. "Actually, I have a meeting tomorrow that I can't put off. Will that assuage your guilty conscience a bit?"

 _You're more trouble than you're worth._

"A bit."

But there was something else that had been niggling at him, pushing at him now through the cramping aches that seized him, something puzzling.

"You haven't asked me any questions."

"Is there something you want to tell me?" Asami's typical response. Evade with a question.

"I just figured you'd want to know what happened…" Not that he wanted to think about it. "You know, so you could go after whoever did this—Oh. You already know."

But Asami said nothing and merely looked away. And an ice that had nothing to do with heroin pulled at Akihito's already tense muscles.

"And he's already dead?"

 _…_ _more trouble…_

Another thick veil of smoke obscured Asami's face.

"Why do you ask questions that might have answers you won't like?"

Akihito sat up and hunched over, looking at his hands.

"Would you really be okay with him getting away with this?" Asami asked. "Perhaps doing it to someone else?"

"No." Akihito squeezed his eyes tight. " _NO…_ It's just…"

There was more to it, something he couldn't define, something to do too much with him and his own culpability, but his exhausted, tormented brain couldn't put the thought together. Or maybe it didn't want to.

He surged to his feet, dragging the duvet with him and paced across the room.

"So seven weeks, huh?" he said, that maddening wobble of threatening hysteria back. "I've probably been fired."

"We sent a message to your editor through your e-mail to say that your mother was ill."

If his editor bought that one, Akihito could probably sell him a span of the Akashi Kaiykō bridge.

"Poor Mom," he said. "I suppose you sent her a message, too? Who did you tell her was sick?"

"We—or rather you—told her you had gotten a last minute internship with a magazine shooting in Fiji and that you would have no cell phone access and limited internet."

Asami recited this litany of lies with bland detachment, never taking his eyes off Akihito.

"And my friends? They went to the police the last time."

"The dark-haired one…Kou? Bought our story. But the other seemed close to putting some of the pieces together. Whether he could assemble an accurate picture or not is hard to say."

"Takato. You're not going to break his kneecaps or anything if he figures it out?"

"I'll try to restrain myself."

Akihito continued his circuit of the room, aware of Asami's eyes on him the entire time. He stopped in front of the dormant flat screen, caught by his altered reflection, his hand stealing up unconsciously to touch his hair. If Takato or Kou saw him like this…

"I can have a colorist here within an hour."

Akihito spun around.

"At two in the morning? Only you, Asami."

Asami got up and crossed the room to stand next to Akihito, his body a barrier or a bulwark, Akihito didn't know.

"Say that again," Asami murmured.

"What?"

"Only me."

Asami's arms came around him and though Akihito flinched again, Asami did not let him go and Akihito found he could stand it through the thick duvet and let himself melt into the iron heat of it.

"Only you, Asami."

###

He couldn't settle. He'd never been one to sit for long periods of time, even on a stakeout, some part of him was always moving. This was different. This was too conscious.

He'd booted up his computer to check his e-mails but that was too overwhelming. After sending out a quick (he hoped) breezy "hi, I'm back" note to the most critical names in his address book, he couldn't face any more. Texting would have been easier. Maybe. But his cellphone was long gone. (A flash of unwanted memory, a rough hand scrabbling in the pocket of his jeans…)

He got up and paced around the condo, fiddling with the buttons of the stereo system, flipping through DVDs. Asami was out at his meeting so there wasn't even anyone to banter with, and it hit him with a sudden, solid force that he was alone and that he didn't like it. He looked at the phone beside the sofa and thought about calling Asami, but that would be beyond pathetic. If he called any of his friends, he wasn't sure he would be able to keep up the charade in the face of all the questions they'd have. And they'd want to meet up and he wasn't ready for that yet.

He ended up in the kitchen, rooting through the cupboards for something, anything sweet. In a side drawer, a small pink and white box caught his attention. He picked it up, recognizing the name of a pharmaceutical company on the package but not the name of the drug. Inside were three hypodermics with plastic protectors over the needles.

What the hell?

Akihito carried the box back to his room, opened a browser on his computer and typed the name on the box into a search engine.

Naloxone Hydrochloride  
Brand names: Narcan, Evzio  
Drug class(es): antidotes  
Dosage Form: injection  
Content: 0.4 mg naloxone hydrochloride and sodium chloride per mL, in water  
Naloxone systemic is used in the treatment of: Opioid Overdose

What….the _hell_?

###

In restrospect, it hadn't been the best idea, leaving Akihito alone so soon; but even though he could focus little on work, Asami had stayed at the office after the meeting, remembering the look of self-recrimination on Akihito's face, thinking any slight return to normalcy might help.

It was well into night time but still earlier than usual when he arrived home. The apartment was quiet. He slipped off his shoes and headed for the living room but stood stunned in the doorway.

The room was a wreck. All of the cushions had been torn from the furniture and strewn across the floor, every ornament pulled off every shelf, even one of the massive bookcases dragged away from the wall. ( _How had he done that_?)

Asami spun around and made for the kitchen. It was worse there. The cupboard doors all stood open, the drawers pulled out and upended, all of their contents spilled over the countertop and floor. It looked like there had been an earthquake, a very localized earthquake in this apartment and nowhere else.

"Akihito?" he called but there was no response.

He checked the powder room and the bathroom and there again, anything that could be emptied had been emptied. This wasn't a temper tantrum. This was a search.

" _Akihito_!"

Pulse accelerating, he strode into his bedroom, past the total disarray of bedding and expensive suits in heaps, through the hidden door of the panic room, standing open. Inside, all of the secret panels had been opened and an obscene mix of firearms and black leather S&M equipment littered the bed.

Akihito stood by the bed, a pink and white box in one hand and a small handgun in the other, his brows drawn furiously over shadowed eyes.

"Where is it?" he demanded.

"Give me the gun."

Asami held out his hand but Akihito shook his head.

"Not until you tell me where it is."

"Whatever it is, it obviously isn't here," Asami said. "Put the gun on the bed and tell me what you're looking for."

"Like you don't know."

It took a moment for Asami to recognize the box that Dr. Nagato had given him, a precaution, she had said. " _Do not underestimate the drive and ingenuity of an addict_." But he had refused to think of Akihito as an addict and had cavalierly slipped the box into a drawer.

Was the state of the apartment what she had meant by drive and ingenuity? And did that mean that Akihito had been looking for a hit? Drive, ingenuity and Akihito with a gun was an unpredictable combination.

"Akihito," Asami said, forcing a steady calm over his voice, "there is no heroin in this apartment."

"There has to be! You traffic this shit, you bastard!"

"I don't deal heroin." Real anger threatened to break through fake calm.

"Then why do you have this?" Akihito held up the box of naloxone and shook it.

"Dr. Nagato left that as a precaution."

"A precaution? In case I'm as weak as you think I am!"

"I don't think you're weak." Asami took a halting step forward, but Akihito waved the gun unsteadily at him. None of the guns in this room were stored loaded. Would Akihito have known how to arm this one?

"You do," Akihito said. "You have this because you don't think I can make it through this. You think you're going to have to rescue me again, from myself this time. And why not? How many times have you rescued me now?"

"Only because you have always had the strength to hold on."

That was too much. Akihito moaned and dropped to his knees, the naloxone and the gun clattering to the floor. Asami kicked the gun out of reach, knelt and took the boy in his arms. Akihito's head fell back and his whole body shook, the epicenter of that localized earthquake.

"And you will hold on through this," Asami said fiercely.

"I didn't like it," Akihito whispered, eyes closed, his voice compressed by his arced throat. "I know people who say it's amazing, but I didn't like it."

"Because you don't need it," Asami said. "Heroin feels good to people who can't find real pleasure on their own. That has never been you."

Akihito raised his head and looked at Asami.

"But after a while, I wanted it," he said.

"Are you beating yourself up because of that?"

"They made me beg for it," Akihito said, ignoring his question. "I promised to do anything if they'd just give it to me. I gave up."

"You did not give up." Asami held him by the shoulders and gave him a little shake that set Akihito's head swaying back and forth. "You stayed alive."

"I want it now." Akihito closed his eyes. "But if I begged you, you wouldn't give it to me, would you?"

There was a long silence and when Asami finally spoke, it was in a voice broken under harsh restraint.

"Let's not find out."

Akihito's head fell forward.

"Please, Asami," he murmured, the heat of his words burning through every layer of clothing, skin and bone to sear Asami to the core. "I'm begging you."

In one movement, Asami twisted Akihito around and pressed him down, his back to the floor, bending low and holding him there, his mouth pressed over the boy's, swallowing his protests and his pleas. His hands traveled down and freed Akihito's t-shirt from the waistband of his jeans and then slid back up along soft, warm skin he knew so well, that this time did not flinch at his touch. When his fingers brushed across one of Akihito's nipples, it drove a moan from the boy that reverberated against the back of Asami's throat, forcing him to break the seal he had created and draw a desperate breath of air.

"No, Asami!" Akihito gasped, his hands pushing at Asami's shoulders. "Ah!" he cried, as Asami drew down again, his lips burning along the elegant tendons of Akihito's neck and his hands roving again, working the fastenings of Akihito's jeans until he could slip his hand inside, under his briefs and close over Akihito's penis, feeling it harden against his palm. This—this at least, was within his power and his will to grant.

"No, don't!" Akihito sobbed, pushing still, his bare feet braced on the floor, trying to squirm away, but Asami held him fast.

"Shhhh."

"Asami, we can't—we can't—"

"I know," Asami said, his voice velvet against Akihito's skin. "We won't. Don't worry."

Gently, he pulled jeans and briefs over the boy's hips, freeing his erection and slipped both hands under the round firmness of Akihito's ass, tilting his hips forward.

"This," Asami said, "you will never have to beg for."

And he bent and ran his tongue from the base of the boy's erection, along the length of it, drawing slow, hot circles around the tip. Akihito let his head fall backward with a wordless moan. Asami watched the boy's face as his tongue languidly roamed along his cock. This had not changed, would never change, the swift flush of skin, the quick abandon to his touch. As Akihito's hips began to move in his hands, something deep within him exulted. He grinned wickedly.

"Although I like it when you do," he said.

"A-Asami!"

Asami's lips sank down over Akihito's erection and pulled and drew and sank again, swaying until Akihito felt everything fall away, fear, anger, pain, every bit of his body except the part enveloped in the wet heat of Asami's mouth. Until there was only this, only sensation, drawing him in and up, blurring everything else. And his last coherent thought was that he had never wanted anything more.

* * *

 **Note:** Please be aware that many STDs, including HIV, can be transmitted via oral sex. I felt it was in character for Asami to disregard this, given his nature and the situation.

Thanks for reading along. I appreciate follows and favorites. Please let me know what you think!


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4  
**

Akihito lay on his side, his arms splayed across the bed in a gesture of invitation so enticing, it stretched Asami's resolve nearly to breaking point.

The boy had come three times in quick succession, hardening almost immediately after each release, writhing in a confused tangle of shame and helpless want. Now exhausted and loaded up with amitriptyline, he had fallen into what looked to be something close to the respite sleep was meant to be and not the juddery, sweat-drenched torment of the last few days. Asami could not disturb that, in spite of the obsessive madness of his own need.

And so he sat in a chair by the bed and watched Akihito sleep with leashed hunger, not for the boy's body and what he could take from it but for the indefinable quiddity of Akihito himself. The fierce drive to possess something too intangible to ever fully grasp turned his blood to acid and made every pulse a burning rush. If anyone in this room was an addict, it was him, he well knew.

The burr of his silenced cellphone vibrating against his chest broke his focus. He drew it from his pocket and read Kirishima's name on the screen.

"Asami," he said in a low voice.

" _Asami-sama, Chao Wa Lon has accepted the terms and has forwarded the information you requested. I could find no match on the name but he insists he has provided us with everything he has. I've isolated stills from the security footage he gave us. They're not particularly clear, but I'm running them through image recognition software. So far, I'm not turning up any matches in our database_."

"Send the stills to me."

" _Yes, sir_."

He had known from the start that what had happened to Akihito had not been random. It had been too specific, too designed to cut deeply. Too personal. None of his business rivals were foolhardy enough for such a move. With the exception of one highly strung Chinese prima donna, disputes in his world were generally handled in less melodramatic ways. He knew also—before the download of the photos had completed—that he would recognize the face, no matter how poor the quality. Because he was meant to recognize it. The person who did this wanted him to know. There was no satisfaction in anonymous revenge.

Still, it took him a moment as he watched the first image unfold across the screen, mentally thumbing through the faces of past lovers. Odd, how clearly he remembered them—and how dispassionately. But this face…it was not stored in that mental file and yet he had seen it before. Or its near relation. He flicked his finger across the screen to the next photo and the next, the face turning towards the camera in deliberate increments of clear awareness until the final still showed him full on, smiling widely.

And then he remembered.

" _Have you received them_?" Kirishima asked.

For one hollow heartbeat, Asami was silent.

"Have Suoh bring the car around," he said.

He slipped the phone back into his pocket and stood, staring down at Akihito, unable to resist brushing a finger across a sleep-curled hand, the hand that had held a gun on him last night. There had been a moment then where some cool, analytical part of his brain wondered just how far Akihito would go. Gods knew the boy had been pushed to his limits before and taken up the weapons of the world that had swallowed him, but he'd never been pushed from inside like this. And would Akihito really have pulled the trigger—on _him_? It might have been the perfect revenge for the man in the security stills. In a way, it was a pity it hadn't worked out like that.

Akihito awoke to the muffled sounds of subdued voices and quiet activity going on somewhere in the apartment. The events of the night before spilled through his brain in a tumult of chaotic images, like a badly edited, badly lit video of a madman. Him. Tearing up the sleek order of Asami's apartment. Him. Holding a gun. Him. So desperate to shut everything down, he would have willingly plunged back into that warm, poisonous fog of heroin.

No. That was not him. None of it. He wouldn't let it become him.

He pushed himself up, prepared to face the mess he had made, but the disorder of the bedroom had been straightened while he slept, the door to the panic room closed and concealed again. The only thing out of place was a chair turned to the bed. Had Asami sat up all night, watching him? The thought sent a frisson of dismay down his back. The chair was empty now, except for a thick sheet of expensive stationery propped against the back, covered in a firm black scrawl.

Akihito wrapped the top sheet around him, slid across the bed and picked up the note and read.

 _I have gone to the office. This should serve two purposes where you are concerned:_

 _It should further ease your needlessly guilty conscience and_

 _Demonstrate my faith in you by not hovering over you 24/7._

 _The cleaning lady may be here when you wake, to set the apartment to rights. Do not feel guilty about this, either. She is being paid overtime, which she will undoubtedly use for a trip to the casinos in Macau, so you will have provided both pleasure to her and employment to others._

 _Asami_

 _PS: The colorist will arrive at four this afternoon. I have instructed her to restrict her work to the hair on your head._

Akihito snorted. Number two might have been touching if it wasn't for the fact that he knew there was a guard outside the door and probably at least three more posted at other locations around the building, one or more of whom would follow him and report his every move if he decided to leave the apartment.

No, what both numbers one and two and the entire deliberately upbeat note meant was that he had scared the shit out of Asami last night, and Asami was surrounding him with carefully orchestrated activity cloaked in reasonable excuses. Abnormal normalcy.

Fuck that. Fuck all of it: this, last night, the whole lost seven weeks. This was _not_ who he was, someone who needed to be handled with care in case he broke. He wasn't fragile. He was tough, like rubber. He bounced back. Every time. This time would be no different.

Wrapped in the sheet and new resolve, he headed for the bathroom. After a shower, he went to his room to get dressed, only a little stung by the fact that most of his jeans were too loose in the waist.

"Okay, I've lost some weight. But the way I eat, that'll change fast," he muttered to himself. In fact, he could smell food cooking and for the first time in what seemed like forever, it actually smelled good.

Out in the kitchen, the cleaning lady was stirring a big pot and turned and smiled when she saw him.

"Ah, Akihito-chan! This is going to be an all day job, so I'm making lunch for my crew."

Her crew? Akihito peered around the corner into the living room and saw two young men polishing the floor. So it needed a crew to clean up after him. That was impressive—in a warped kind of way.

"You go sit down at the table and I'll bring you some, too."

He was too hungry to argue with her and did as he was told, his face pinking a little as he wondered what she thought about the total wreck she'd been asked to repair. But people who worked for Asami tended not to ask too many questions, and she provided him with lunch without so much as a raised eyebrow. He found that when the food was in front of him, the thought of eating it no longer appealed to him, but he pushed himself through the meal, thinking of his baggy pants and how his shirt hung from his shoulders.

She left with her crew just as the colorist arrived (the timing was too perfect to be coincidence,) leaving the apartment wiped clean of any sign of what had happened the night before. Not everything, though, could be as easily corrected. The colorist took one look at him and made a face.

"The guy who called me specified honey blond," she said with a sigh. "We're going to be here all night."

Akihito chuckled at the mental image of Kirishima—who would have made the arrangements—uttering the phrase "honey blond" in his deadpan voice.

The colorist was pretty—very pretty—her own hair a brilliant shade of magenta that made her skin glow, and he amused himself with thoughts of what Asami would make of her if he came home early and found her hovering over him. But the process was grueling, the girl being a professional and taking it step-by-careful-step to remove the cheap dark color without turning his hair to brittle hay. By the time she was done, he had a headache and painful knots had bunched in his neck and shoulders.

He went into the bathroom with the thought of taking a hot bath and was caught again by his reflection in the mirror. At least now the contrast between his hair and his pale skin was not as startling. And the color was beautiful—so beautiful it made him mourn the lost length even more. He was vain, he admitted it. He loved playing with the look of his hair, loved how the fall of it across his forehead made his eyes seem huge. The girl had trimmed it for him, doing her best to make it look like an intentional style instead of something rats had been chewing at, and it did look better, but still…

It would grow, he told himself furiously. It wasn't permanent. Nothing that had happened was permanent. Not the hair, definitely not the drugs and—and not anything else. Not what went on in those small, dark, curtained, stifling rooms. Stinking bodies, rough hands—

He couldn't—couldn't breathe. Stalking stiff-legged, he stumbled down the hall and out onto the balcony, not hearing the soft electronic beep that sounded when the door opened. Outside, it was dark but the air was still sultry, like slurry in his lungs and not the thin clarity he needed. He leaned against the railing and hung his head, gasping, shoulders heaving in a desperate rhythm until they began to shake and he realized with a start that he was laughing.

Because it really was kind of ridiculous, all things considered. How many times did you have to be raped before you fell apart? What had been different this time? Asami and Fei Long both had hurt him, but neither had been able to really take anything from him, not in essentials. He had remained who he was.

The difference in that other place was that he had been treated like there had been nothing to take, no value in the qualities that made him uniquely him. He was simply a thing to be used. Worse, a disposable thing, only one among twelve other things that used to be boys, proving with a gross and terrifying regularity just how little value life held in the black pits of the world.

He let his head hang, staring dizzyingly down forty stories to the street below. Too far to jump this time, nothing to grab hold of. And where would he go? Where was the escape route? The apartment behind him was clean in more ways than one, but down there…there had to be something. It wouldn't be that hard to find, not in this city. And then he wouldn't have to think about black pits and nameless boys.

The soft click of a latch sounded behind him and he turned to see one of Asami's men whose name he couldn't remember standing in the doorway. Of course. There was probably an alarm on the door that had alerted him as soon as Akihito had stepped outside.

"Sorry to disturb you," the man said. "Asami-sama called and asked if you wanted to order dinner in."

Yeah, that was bullshit, Asami and his "I will not hover over you" crap. Akihito turned and propped his elbows on the railing in a show of no-I-was-not-having-a-panic-attack-here-on-the-balcony nonchalance.

"No, that's okay," he said. "I—uh—I'm going to cook."

He wasn't sure what was even in the kitchen, but the guard nodded and stepped back, holding the door for him. Akihito figured the man probably had orders to get him back inside the apartment. Maybe by tomorrow, there'd be childproof locks on the doors. He shrugged. He couldn't breathe out here, anyway.

The guard went back to his post in the outer hallway and Akihito started a mindless circuit of the living room, unaware he was pacing like a cat in a cage until he passed the big balcony windows for the third time.

Okay, this had to stop. He had to stop it.

Without giving himself time to argue himself out of it, he picked up the landline phone and dialed a number. It rang three times before a familiar voice answered.

"Kou? It's Akihito. Yeah, no really. I'm good. Yeah."

"Asami-sama, Inaba has reported in. Takaba is back inside the apartment."

Kirishima noted the tiny lines of tension around his boss's eyes eased and the cool mask slipped back into place.

"Without a fight?" Asami asked.

"Apparently so," Kirishima said. "Inaba also reports that Takaba placed a call at 9:48. The number corresponds to that of his friend Yoshimura Kou."

Only a very slight lift of an eyebrow betrayed Asami's surprise. They all had good reason to believe that Takaba was resilient, but from what Kirishima had seen when the boy was carried into the condo five days ago, he'd doubted even Takaba's remarkable reserves. He would be quite happy to admit he was wrong.

Kirishima had seen lovers come and go over the years and had learned he could never predict or completely understand Asami's tastes, but Takaba Akihito had seemed nothing more than a novelty at first. Kirishima had certainly not expected that the boy—without even trying—would root himself so firmly in Asami's life. It worried him on a number of levels, none of which—he knew—were open for discussion.

And so he turned to the matter of the two dossiers in his hands.

"This is what we have so far on Sagawa Jiro." Kirishima placed the first folder on the desk in front of Asami and watched as he opened it and began to read. "You'll see he has a record of arrests, mostly petty grifting. The most interesting incident here…" Kirishima pointed. "It seems he was offered a plea deal and refused. Our sources are checking prison rolls at Fuchu during that period to see if he was deliberately trying to contact someone inside."

"And we have a fair inkling who that might be," Asami said.

"Yes." Kirishima nodded. "We expect to uncover a trail that leads to Chao Wa Lon."

They already knew that Chao was responsible for the selling of Takaba from Macau to the brothel in Dongguan, but the agreement in exchange for the security footage had been that Asami would not retaliate against Chao, who insisted he had been unaware of any connection between Asami, Takaba or the man in the dossier. There had been no such agreement for anyone else involved.

"I want the names of everyone Sagawa was in contact with after his release from Fuchu, anyone who led him to Chao," Asami said.

"Yes, sir." So it was to be a thorough extermination.

"And Allied Securities in Macau," Asami said with deceptive indifference. "How much of it do we own?"

Fortunately, Kirishima was well versed in following his boss's swift shifts in topic.

"I will have to check to be certain," Kirishima said, "but I think eleven percent."

"I don't think that's enough," Asami said.

"Yes, sir." Allied Securities was Chao's only legitimate concern, and as such, a takeover could not be construed as retaliation. It was business. And it would teach Chao Wa Lon an important lesson in diversification. He would at least retain his life and critical body parts. The others involved in this would not get the same consideration.

Silently, Asami held out his hand, and Kirishima handed him the second dossier. Asami placed it on the desk next to the first but did not open it.

"I want to know immediately if there are any leads on Sagawa."

"Yes, Asami-sama."

"That's all."

When Kirishima had gone, Asami ran his hand down the cover of the folder before opening it. This dossier was not new. He kept files on all of his lovers. In his position, he had no choice as too many people believed the quickest route to the power behind Asami Ryuichi was through his bedroom. This one, however, had recently been updated, the time stamp on the top sheet from only an hour before.

 _Sagawa Kenji_

 _Birthdate: March 6, 19##_

 _Date of Death: No recorded date of death_

 _Birthplace: Ikeda, Osaka_

 _Residence: Unknown_

 _Last known place of residence: Harajuku, Shibuya Ward, Tokyo; December, 201# until September, 201#_

And then a list of minor arrests, similar to his brother's, the last dating from more than two years ago. After that, Sagawa Kenji seemed to have disappeared from record—both official and not-so-official.

A photo was clipped inside the front cover, the resemblance between this and the man in the security footage clear, though where the other face was heavy and squarely set, this had a wild beauty, though wild was perhaps the operative word. There was something in the eyes, even in that photo…

It wasn't that he didn't remember, only that it was not his nature to dwell on the past. If mistakes were made, you learned from them. Otherwise, there was no value in hanging on to pointless memories. Only now he was being forced to look back, to see if there was something he had missed. 

* * *

AN: Thank you to everyone reading along. Hope this one wasn't too boring. It felt a bit like one of those saggy middle chapters while writing it.


	5. Chapter 5

Thank you to everyone who took the time to leave such thoughtful reviews. They are much appreciated, as well as follows and favorites. I hope you will stay with me as Akihito works his way through this!

* * *

"Akihito! Dude!"

"Over here, Akihito!"

Kou and Takato waved at him from across the crowded, noisy, brightly lit restaurant. It had been Kou's choice, his favorite soba joint in Shibuya, but he'd pointed out it shouldn't matter to Akihito since anywhere they served food was Akihito's favorite.

It took Akihito a minute to acclimate himself to the jostling assault of sound and color. After seven days cooped up in the monochrome quiet of Asami's condo, the rest of the world was going to take a little getting used to.

He waved to his friends, registering the flicker of shock that swept over their faces when they saw him. Ideally, he should have waited until he looked more like himself to meet up with them, but the longer he stayed curled around his fear and his pain, the weaker he felt. Besides that, he loved his friends and he needed them, whether or not he would ever be able to tell them why he needed them so very much at that moment.

"Dude! What happened to you?" Kou shouted as Akihito weaved his way through tables and chairs. "You've been scalped!"

"Oh, yeah!" Akihito ducked his head and rubbed a hand over his hair. "Ah, it was too hot, so I cut it all off."

Kou got up and gave him a quick, fierce hug that took Akihito by surprise, forcing him to shift his weight precariously to keep from stumbling. Takato rose more slowly, watching Akihito, his quieter, more perceptive gaze catching the startled misstep. The hug he gave Akihito was gentle, almost exploratory, and when he stepped back, it was with a little frown between his eyebrows.

But Kou pulled Akihito down into a chair and waved a waitress over and made him order something to eat

"So Fiji, huh? You were taking pictures of swimsuit models, right? I bet you saw lots of great boobs."

"Breasts, Kou, they're called breasts," Takato said.

"It wasn't swimsuit models," Akihito said. "It was more of a cultural exchange."

"Swimsuits are cultural."

"Maybe." Akihito grinned. "But this was more like ordinary people and stuff. You know, locals."

He'd spent the two days after he'd called Kou researching Fiji on the internet, but in the bright racket of the restaurant, he fished desperately for facts and details and found they slipped through the distracted slats of his brain.

"You know, it's kind of funny," Kou said. "You get kidnapped by thugs and come back looking like you'd been to a tropical island, but then you go to a tropical island and come back looking like you'd been kidnapped by thugs. Only you, Akihito."

Akihito laughed along with Kou but noticed that Takato wasn't laughing.

"Seriously, you look like hell, Aki," Takato said.

"What the hell?" Kou punched Takato on the arm. "That's cold."

"Nah, it's okay," Akihito said. "I know I've looked better. I—uh—caught a bug or something the last week. Been puking my guts out since I've been home."

At least that last part was true.

"It turned out to be more boring than anything," he said quickly. "I'll show you the pictures if you want. I got a whole series of shots of a nursery school. Really cute kids."

He hoped that would shut them down. They mumbled something about how they couldn't wait.

"Anyway, tell me what you guys have been doing. Kou, did you ever go out with that girl your mom wanted you to date?"

Kou launched happily into a detailed recount of "the date from hell," and Akihito leaned forward, what he hoped was an enthusiastic smile on his face and tried to listen, unaware that the foot he had hooked over the rung of the chair had taken up a nervous rhythm, tapping against the chair and making it seem as though Akihito was shaking all over.

He tried—he really tried to take in what Kou was saying. It was a good story. The girl sounded like a nightmare. She sounded a lot like Kou's mother, actually. But as Akihito affectionately watched Kou's face twist in a series of exaggerated expressions, his mind pulled him back to memories of other boys' faces, blank and hopeless in the fetid dark of the brothel.

He hadn't been able to talk to them. None of them spoke Japanese. And anyway, they seemed to avoid making eye contact with him. The brothel owner must have warned them off—or they'd picked up on his special pariah status by the harsher treatment he'd received and so kept a careful distance, as though they feared being punished for associating with him. They were acquiescent. He was not. At least, not until the heroin took hold…

"Get this, though." The shift in conversation from Kou to Takato jarred Akihito back to the present. "He's seeing her again next week."

Akihito started to laugh when two big hands came down suddenly and hard on his shoulders. He rocketed out of his chair, his head making contact with the person who had come up behind him, and spun around, swinging wildly. The tall boy, their friend Yoshida, took a step backward, hands up, half in surrender, half in defense.

"Shit, Akihito!" Yoshida said. "Jumpy much?"

Akihito sagged against the back of his chair, heart ricocheting like a pinball.

"Don't do that to people, you asshole!" he snapped. "You want to give someone a heart attack?"

"Sorry, grandpa," Yoshida said. "Maybe you need to cut back on whatever you're drinking." He jerked his head at Kou. "Hey, I got a friend over here who's interested in that computer you want to sell but I don't know anything about it. Come talk to him."

Kou cast a curious glance at Akihito but followed Yoshida to the other side of the restaurant. Akihito sat staring into his beer, feet pressed hard to the floor to stop from shaking.

"What's wrong?"

He looked up to see Takato watching him, eyebrows drawn.

"You mean besides the fact that Yoshida is still a jackass?" Akihito asked, faking a laugh.

"That's old news," Takato said. "He never used to bother you, though."

"He doesn't bother me now. It's just..." Akihito ran a finger along the collar of his shirt. "It's really loud in here."

"You have the worst poker face known to man," Takato said.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"I mean you've never been a good liar. It's just not in you."

The adrenaline surge from Yoshida's little prank was dissipating, leaving Akihito with the feeling of little razor-edged darts cutting along nerve endings.

"What, you mean it's not loud in here?" His laugh sounded more forced by the minute.

"C'mon, Aki," Takato said. "I know Kou acts like he believes everything you say but he's worried, too. After what happened with that Chinese bastard and you disappearing then and coming back with such a crazy story…Can you blame us? What's really going on?"

"Nothing's going on," Akihito muttered, unable to look at Takato. "Let it go, okay?"

"We don't even know where you're living now." Takato was clearly not letting anything go. "Aren't we still your friends? You know you can trust us."

Gods, yes, he knew that. It wasn't a question of trust, but a part of him didn't want them to ever know, didn't want to see it in their faces when they looked at him and see it change the way they treated him. He didn't want to lose the Akihito they thought he was, the Akihito he hoped he could find his way back to.

And then, there was the little fact that telling them everything would mean finally telling them about Asami, which—on top of other trivial details like the whole crime lord thing—essentially meant coming out. This sure as hell wasn't the time for that. No way.

Maybe this had been a mistake. It was too soon.

"Listen." Akihito dug in his pockets for some money to pay for his beer. "I'm still not feeling that great. I—I'm gonna go. Will you tell Kou I said goodbye and I'll see you guys later?"

Takato reached out and grabbed him by the wrist, holding firmly when Akihito flinched.

"Don't go," he said. "I'm sorry I pushed. We'll talk about something else, okay?"

Akihito hesitated. Leaving now would be a concession to everything that had happened to him. The old Akihito wouldn't have given in like that.

"C'mon," Takato said, seeing him waver. "Kou has ten more ridiculous stories he wants to tell you. You don't have to talk or anything. Just stay."

 _It is too loud in here,_ he thought. It prickled against him and made him want to jump out of his skin. His foot started to jiggle again.

"Ten stories?" His laugh was real this time, even if it was a little pained. He wasn't sure how much longer he could sit still.

"Maybe we can keep him to five," Takato said, smiling softly. "Save the other five for next week?"

Next week. Yes, they could do this again next week. He didn't have to try to fix everything in one night.

###

His cell rang, Kirishima's name on the screen.

"Asami."

" _Asami-sama_ ," Kirishima said. " _We have a positive ID on Sagawa. He made contact with a low-level associate of Fujimori at 10:00 this evening in Kabukicho_."

"What's he after, do we know?"

" _He was hunting around for names of heroin dealers, according to Fujimori, who expects payment for this information_."

"Tell him he'll get paid when I get Sagawa." Asami took a quick, fierce pull on his cigarette. "And I want any names that were passed on to Sagawa."

" _Yes, Asami-sama_."

"Our man is still with Takaba? He hasn't shaken him off?"

" _It appears Takaba has made no attempt to elude his detail_ ," Kirishima said. " _Hidaka's last report came in five minutes ago. Takaba left the restaurant at 12:32 and walked to a supermarket four blocks away, where Hidaka reports he is doing some shopping. Would you like a report on what he is purchasing_?"

"Only if he buys anything more sinister than anpan and Kappa Ebisen."

" _Excuse me, sir. I have another message coming in from Hidaka_."

It was too soon for another official report. Something had happened. Kirishima ended the call and Asami got up and strode across the living room, a subconscious act against the tension that began to spread tightening fingers across his shoulders. Control was his religion but when it involved Akihito, he became an infidel.

He almost anticipated the ringing of his cell.

"Yes?" he snapped.

" _Takaba was approached by a male in the supermarket_."

Those tense fingers dug like claws into his muscles.

" _Hidaka intervened and the man backed down without resistance. Hidaka is confident the man was not Sagawa but awaits your instructions. Do you want him to bring Takaba in_?"

"At once."

Akihito would balk, would kick, bitch and complain when he got home—at least, the Akihito from before would do all of that, the Akihito who would have shaken off Hidaka within the first fifteen minutes as a matter of course, who would see no problem striking up conversations with total strangers in supermarkets…until one of them dragged him away.

It didn't matter, Asami gave himself a mental shaking. He needed the boy back. He needed him, period. Even now, with the apartment cleared of Akihito's fury, it still bore the boy's mark far more than his, from the stack of horror movies and gaming consoles to the heap of ratty sneakers in the once-pristine shoe closet and the small room that contained the beating heart of the boy's ambition in boxes of camera equipment and a bright collage of photos tacked across the walls. He could be wiped out tomorrow and nothing of him would linger here except perhaps the smell of his cigarettes. But Akihito was everywhere. A presence that strong could not be so easily swept away.

He stood by the windows overlooking the city he had casually come to regard as his property and frowned, thoughts drifting from Akihito to the man who threatened him.

"What are you doing in Tokyo, Sagawa?" he asked into the night. "Do you _want_ to be caught?"

###

"You don't have to ride up with me," Akihito snapped. "No one's going to abduct me in the elevator."

"Sorry. It's orders."

Akihito leaned against the wall of the elevator, fuming—not so much at Hidaka as at the situation and at the tiny part of him that was glad Hidaka was there. If this had been two months ago, Hidaka would be prostrating himself before Asami, apologizing for having lost Akihito's trail within the first hour of duty. But tonight, Akihito had given in, only arguing to be allowed to purchase the few scant items he'd managed to pick up before being hustled from the store. Otherwise, he'd come along quietly, like a good boy. A mass of snakes rolled and twisted inside of him at the thought of how he'd changed. No, how he had _been_ changed. That's what made it all the harder to take, that it was not of his choosing, outside his control.

In the hall outside the penthouse, Hidaka handed him off to Suoh, like a package or a pet he'd just walked.

"Does he want to see me?" Hidaka asked.

Suoh shook his head. Hidaka stepped back into the elevator.

"Hidaka," Akihito said, half-turned away. "Sorry. I don't mean to take it out on you."

"Not a problem," Hidaka said and the elevator doors slid closed.

No, he couldn't take it out on men who were only doing their job. But Asami was going to hear about it, hear about all of it. A list of grievances piled up in Akihito's brain and tumbled over into a welter of words that needed screaming.

Suoh held the door for him and Akihito stepped inside the apartment. He remembered being dragged back here after he had tried to run away, how Asami's usually unreadable face had—for a split second—registered confusion, unable to see through him for the first time since they'd met. That had been a moment, when he had flummoxed the brilliant mind of Asami Ryuichi. Now Asami looked at him in complete understanding, a knowing sadness like a chill wind between them, and everything Akihito had planned to shout at him slipped unspoken into that wind.

Instead, he dropped his bags in the entry by his discarded sneakers, crossed the room in focused strides and took the front of Asami's plush robe in his fists

"Make me forget," he whispered hoarsely, his throat constricted with layers of frustration. "Wipe it all away like you did last time."

He had the satisfaction of seeing something close to that earlier confusion flash across Asami's beautiful features before a darkness of hunger and denial swept it away. Asami's hands closed over his fists and he opened his mouth to speak, but for once, Akihito was ahead of him.

"No, don't tell me it's too soon," he said. "And don't blow me off with a blowjob."

And that made the darkness positively blacken, he was pleased to see. Push Asami and he would push back, hopefully right into the bedroom. Akihito scrabbled in the pocket of his jeans, pulled out a small, flat box and pressed it into Asami's hand. He was rewarded with an unprecedented look of blank shock that widened Asami's eyes and raised his eyebrows nearly to his hairline.

"You complete and utter brat," Asami said, glancing up from the box of condoms. "Is this what you went shopping for?"

"I bought some wakame, too."

One side of Asami's mouth curled into an almost unwilling smile, but his voice was husky when he murmured "You're kinkier than I thought."

"You would know."

 _C'mon_ , he thought, practically dancing with impatience. _Pick me up. Drag me to the bedroom. Be Asami_.

"You do know how to use those, right?" Push and he would push back.

That did it.

Asami bent and tipped Akihito over his shoulder, Akihito too happy—too _relieved_ to put up even a show of resistance. If he landed on the bed with a toss more gentle than usual, it didn't matter. Asami leaned over him, efficiently divesting Akihito of his clothes, and Akihito felt as though he was being released from the frustrations of the day, from pretense and pain and lies and fear, leaving him free to be remade by Asami's touch.

Asami straightened to remove his robe and in the dim light of the bedroom, his perfect, wicked body bare with purpose so that the sight of him, of his straining erection made Akihito strangle a little whimper—of desire or dismay, he wasn't entirely certain. Asami bent to him, his hands traveling familiar routes from his hips and along his chest, powerful arms circling under his back to draw him near. That insistent iron pressure of sinew and muscle seemed to him the first expression of being taken, his smaller body entering a willing captivity to Asami's strength.

"All you need to remember is that you are mine."

Asami's deep murmur rumbled against Akihito's skin and the heat of Asami's breath in his ear created a sensual paradox. Akihito shivered and tipped his head back, and Asami burned kisses along his arched neck, sending another shiver like a convulsion through his limbs. Asami tightened his hold in a convulsive reflex of his own, his lips continuing down the angle of Akihito's shoulder and across his chest, driving a gasp from the boy. He wrapped his tongue around Akihito's nipple in sinuous coils as one hand stole across the ropey muscles of his stomach, feeling the gasp turn to a sharp intake of air and a breathless little cry of his name.

"That's right, call to me, my name on your lips."

One hand took up Akihito's erection to more gasps and fragmented half-words, while the other slipped between the cleft of his ass, one long finger teasing his opening and slipping slowly inside. Akihito danced beneath him, his face flushed and damp already, eyes closed and lips parted in a sensual despair, blindly seeking a rhythm they both knew well. Asami eased another finger inside and stroked and pulled Akihito along.

These quicksilver responses, how swiftly the boy spilled into wantonness both sweet and lewd was an arousal he had never found anywhere else. That helpless rise to his touch made him feel king and conqueror while Akihito's soft, ingenuous cries melted his core into a liquid flame that pooled in his groin and kindled a need to push those cries until they were lost in screams of pleasure, the heat of Akihito wrapped around his cock.

Akihito sank into the reach and draw of Asami's fingers, startled into a cry of "No!" when they withdrew. When they returned to lay a cool slickness inside him, it sent tremors of expectation radiating from within, the ring of muscle quivering around the fingers that pushed and spread, to make him ready. He let his thighs fall back invitingly and Asami came between them, leaning close, still pumping his fingers and whispering in obscene delight.

"Tell me what you want."

"Y-you, Asami! You!" was all Akihito could manage.

But it wasn't enough for Asami, damn him, always pushing for more.

"Where?"

"Unh!"

That one word tease made him buck lewdly, wildly seeking what he wanted, but Asami's strong hands gripped his hips and pinned them to the bed.

"My Akihito," he purred. "You never listen. Tell me. Say it."

The fingers withdrew with a suddenness that startled Akihito into opening his eyes, meeting the dark intensity of Asami's face and finding in his eyes the courage to answer.

"Inside, Asami," he said. "Put it inside me."

He brought his arms up across the breadth of Asami's shoulders and curled his back, raising his hips and this time feeling the head of Asami's cock press against his entrance. He registered the little strangeness of the condom as Asami pushed inside him, shallowly at first and then with a roll of his hips, a little deeper and deeper—the odd slip and shift of the condom adding a perverse fillip—until they were flush against each other, and Akihito felt himself molded around Asami's heat.

At the return of this feeling, his arms tightened and he pressed his face against Asami's neck, choking on a strangled little sob. The muscles of Asami's shoulders stiffened.

"Akihito," he said without the lascivious teasing of before, "if it's too much—"

Akihito dropped back onto the bed, wrapping his legs tightly around Asami's buttocks to hold him in. Eyes wide and blown with lust, he shook his head.

"Do it, Asami," he said. "Make me forget."

That reignited the burning madness in Asami's eyes. Akihito watched as the man swayed and rocked above him, Asami's eyes never moving from his own face. And in this circle, there was only him, his eyes, his hands, his scent. Even the sounds, the little moans and mindless words he drove from Akihito belonged to him, were of his creation. Filled with him, Akihito closed his eyes and screamed his name one last time as he got his wish.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

 _Make me forget._

The words followed Asami into the next day. On the nightstand, the small box of condoms bore testament to the great bravery of Takaba Akihito, who had come not begging for help but asking in partnership. Even Asami's ego conceded he could not entirely erase what had happened in one night. He had held Akihito in the moments afterward when the backlash of memories struck in waves of tremors the boy could not control and thought that he had seen strong men fold up under far less.

The condoms had been a surprise but also a reminder of the threat that hung over their reunion. As with things in the past, things in the present that were outside of Asami's control—and those were rare in the world he had constructed for himself—were not to be dwelt on. Had it been up to him, he would have forcibly disregarded this particular shadow, but Dr. Nagato had made too critical a point of what was really at stake.

She had called to tell them that the initial blood sample had tested negative for HIV but warned that it would be six months and several more tests before she could give Akihito assurance that he was in the clear.

"You must take precautions until then," she had told Asami. "For his sake as much as your own. If you were to become sick because of him, he would carry that guilt along with everything else. Could you do that to him, regardless of how you feel about yourself?"

The woman had a disturbing brand of insight. He knew that some of his behaviors were down to him spitting in the face of destiny. A good therapist could probably ferret out the reasons why, but what would be the point? He did what he wanted. But in this, he had to grant that she had cannily found the chink in his armor and unhesitatingly drove her point home.

She really was, he thought, wasted in medicine. She would make a great prime minister.

Showered and dressed, he went looking for Akihito, who had been up and out of bed before him—another small return to normalcy. He found him in his old room, cross-legged on the bed, bodies and lenses of cameras strewn about him.

"Oh, hi." Akihito looked up, a quick stain of pink across his cheekbones. "Want me to make you some breakfast? I didn't get to finish the shopping last night but—well—there's seaweed."

"Don't stop what you're doing. I'll get something on the way to the office." Asami watched Akihito concentrate on disassembling a lens, brows drawn in concentration, lower lip in his teeth, charmed by the fact that after all this time and all the deviant things they had done together, the boy still could not suppress a morning-after blush. "Were you worried something had happened to them while you were gone?"

"Huh?" Akihito looked at him again. "No. It's just always a good idea to go over your equipment before you go out to work."

"Work?"

"Yeah." Akihito shrugged. "I—uh—I'm going to see my editor."

"It's a little soon for that."

Akihito frowned, recognizing that casually assertive tone.

"It's probably way too late," he said, adopting his own tone. "But you know me. If he won't listen the first time, I'll just keep talking until he does. Eventually, he'll give in just to get me out of his office."

He rattled on, watching the furrow between Asami's brows deepen.

"I don't think this is a good idea," Asami said.

"No?" Akihito quirked an eyebrow at him. "What would you do? Send in a couple of goons to rough him up?"

"You know what I mean."

Akihito unfolded himself and got up to get a camera bag.

"I know exactly what you mean," he said. "I just thought we settled that a long time ago. I'm not your mistress. I have my own work to do."

"That's not what I mean," Asami said. There had always been a combative tension between Akihito's pride and his own domineering nature, one that he admitted he sometimes piqued for his own amusement, but it was now a fine line he needed to carefully tread, to protect Akihito without breaking him. "If it's already too late, what difference would another week make?"

"It makes a difference to me." Akihito rooted through the many pockets of the bag for a UV filter. "I've already lost two months—add that to the other two I lost over that Hong Kong mess, and I have a lot of ground to make up. I can't sit around here like a houseplant for another week."

A familiar sour bubble swelled in his chest. Asami only took Akihito's work seriously when it threatened his, and even then it was with the casual dismissal of a lion swatting a troublesome fly. He knew it would make Asami's life easier if he just accepted the role of pampered pet, but making things easier for Asami had never been his goal. They'd had this discussion—he felt—a million times already. That there was a subtle, insidious difference this time twisted his insides in painful knots. He sat rather sullenly and began packing his equipment into the bag. Something small but solid landed on the bed next to him.

"What's this?"

It was a cellphone. A new, state-of-the-art one, not like the one he had lost. He picked it up, flipping it on his palm. It even felt expensive. He sighed.

"You know I can't take this."

"It's a loan," Asami said. "You'll pay me back."

"Yeah, and I can just guess what the terms are."

"If you insist, I can have Kirishima draw up an agreement, interest and penalties included."

The darkly suggestive thrum of that voice shivered through Akihito but he stamped it down.

"Asami—"

"For practicality's sake, if not for mine." Asami cut him off. "If you're going to work, you need a phone."

It was true. It was also true he couldn't afford to buy one at the moment. He was nearly broke.

"When you can afford your own," Asami said, "donate this one to charity. Or throw it in the bay. Whatever you like."

While he sat, chewing his lip, unsure what to do, Asami tossed something else on the bed, this time lighter and packaged in cellophane. Akihito picked it up.

"It's a phone case." He pulled it out of the wrapper and laughed out loud. "In the shape of a dog!"

He looked up at Asami, who was regarding him with his usual veiled expression.

"Please tell me you bought this yourself, that you went into a shop and picked this up and paid for it. Dressed like that."

"Certainly not," Asami said. "I made Kirishima do it. I specified a teddy bear design, but I don't think he knows the difference."

"You are a sadistic bastard."

"When the occasion warrants."

Akihito shook his head and concentrated on fitting the case over the phone. Warm, firm fingers grasped his jaw and tilted his head back.

"First installment due on acceptance of delivery," Asami murmured.

He bent and a diffuse warmth preceded the touch of his lips. It was not one of his plundering kisses, tearing down the gates and forcibly dragging Akihito into a red cloud of lust but still too strong to be called a caress. It was a thing of strangely tender command.

 _He still thinks he owns me_ , Akihito thought as the muscles of his neck yielded of their own accord, turning to better fit to Asami's lips, and when Asami drew away, Akihito stayed for a moment, eyes closed, as Asami had molded him. When he opened his eyes, it was to meet a self-satisfied smirk he knew well.

"Call me," Asami said. "I want to hear how it goes."

Akihito snorted softly and shoved the phone into his pocket.

"If it doesn't go well," he asked, "will you send in your goons?"

"I'll have half a dozen of my best men on standby."

###

In the car, Asami pulled out his own phone and punched up his contact list. His secretary answered immediately.

" _Yes, Asami-sama_?"

"Takaba has the phone. I want to double check the signal."

" _We're tracking him now_."

"Who is on his detail today?"

" _Inaba until eight. Tsuba after that_."

"Confirm Takaba's signal through their phones."

" _Already done. Both report no problem receiving the signal_."

Asami ended the call and lit a cigarette. If there had been any news on Sagawa's whereabouts, Kirishima would have told him, but there had been nothing since the previous night. Asami took a deep draw on his cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs for a long moment as he stared unseeingly as Tokyo passed in a blur by his window. What niggled, what had burrowed a hole and rooted there was the fact that he couldn't figure Sagawa out. He had built his empire on predicting the actions of others, of understanding the who, what, where and how. But in his experience, it was the why that gave you the most insight and ammunition and he could not figure out Sagawa's why.

Why go after Takaba? That much was easy. If the aim was to strike at Asami, Akihito was a far more readily accessible target. But the very specific ugliness of what had been done to Akihito—that was the why that vexed him. There were countless ways of hurting someone. Why this particular means? Not knowing—not understanding what motivated Sagawa meant that he could not predict the man's next move. He did not like feeling a step behind. It was an unfamiliar position for him.

What had he missed? What had he left behind in the past that Sagawa had held onto? The city, blurred in the heat of late morning, melted around him and for a rare moment, Asami traveled in memory.

It wasn't even the distant past. Four years ago, no more. The Sagawa brothers, Jiro and Kenji, were small time grifters running a couple of games out of Roppongi and dabbling in moving small amounts of recreational drugs. Had he even met Jiro then? If he had, he didn't remember. It was Kenji, the younger brother, who caught his eye when he tried to fleece Asami, somehow unaware that he had targeted the rising king of Tokyo. Although he denied it, Asami had been fairly certain Kenji had known who he was from the start, that the sheer, foolhardy danger of it was an extra turn on for Kenji. He wasn't an adrenaline junkie like Akihito. He was a rare breed of masochist. He _liked_ getting caught.

And once caught by Asami, it turned out to be mutually agreeable to them both to settle the matter in bed. Kenji's tastes were dark and wild, fueled by cocaine and some blacker secret need that matched well enough with his own. For a while—not very long, a few months maybe—they fed each other's perverse hungers.

But something changed and Kenji's more slovenly habits began to grate on Asami and the younger man's frenetic energy shifted to an irritable paranoia. Then Asami caught Kenji trying to funnel one of his buyers over to his brother and that was that.

Truthfully, that's all he remembered. It was no great affair. It certainly wasn't a relationship. There had not been that sense of disaster, of unfinished business that might come back to haunt him as there had been with Fei Long. The file on Sagawa Kenji contained no highlighted notes, no instructions for surveillance.

 _What_ was he missing?

Why was Sagawa Jiro gunning for him now, four years after the fact? Revenge for dumping his brother? If so, he was a suicidal hysteric, and the work and planning involved in abducting Akihito hadn't been carried out by a hysteric.

Asami opened his briefcase and pulled out the dossier on Sagawa Kenji and read through it again, coming back to the most recent entry.

 _Date of Death: No recorded date of death_

 _Birthplace: Ikeda, Osaka_

 _Residence: Unknown_

The answer might lie with Kenji himself, wherever he was. Asami dug out his phone and called Kirishima again.

"Contact the Haneda Agency. I want a very quiet search launched for Sagawa Kenji."

* * *

Sorry this chapter's a bit short. Had a surprisingly tough time with this one. Maybe because it's all connective tissue. I don't know. But I wanted to get something up soon! And at least there are some answers in here. Thank you again to everyone who is reading along and leaving me such lovely reviews to encourage me!


	7. Chapter 7

**Note:** Sorry so late! Had to get real-world type stuff done. Back on track now. Thanks for waiting!

Just a note that I was asked if it was in character in the last chapter for Asami to have given Akihito a cutesy phone case. I refer you to Finder Volume 7, Chapter 45, where Asami and Akihito have a phone conversation. Akihito did have a teddy bear phone case and in this story, Asami was just trying to replace it.

 **Chapter 7**

The name on his cellphone screen was one he had not seen in over a year. In fact, the last time she had called it had been to tell him to never contact her again. Nice thing to hear from your own mother. If she was calling now…He stifled a mingled feeling of irritation and fear and accepted the call.

"Yeah?"

"Jiro, you son-of-a-bitch, what are you trying to prove?"

He refrained from pointing out that if he was a son-of-a-bitch, that pretty much defined her and instead said "Hello, Mom. I love you too."

"Don't give me that shit. There was a goddamned detective sniffing around here today!"

"Police?"

"No. A private dick. How'd he find me? What did you tell him?"

"What makes you think I sent him?"

She wasn't exactly a stranger to police and private investigations.

"Because he was asking about Kenji," she snarled. "And the only one left on this earth who gives a damn about Kenji is you."

Sagawa nearly dropped his phone.

"What did he say?"

"I told you to let it go," his mother went on, ignoring him. "He's not worth it. He'll drag you down with him, like he always does."

"What did he ask you?"

"How much money are you paying this guy? Sure, you can throw away good money trying to track down your brother but you wouldn't dream of helping out the woman who—"

"Can you shut up for _one second_ and answer my question?"

He wanted to crawl through the phone and strangle her.

"What else would he ask?" she shouted. "He wanted an address or a phone number. Said he was Kenji's parole officer, but I know a parole officer when I see one and he wasn't any parole officer. I slammed the door in his—"

Sagawa hung up and stood, staring at the screen of his phone, heart pounding. It had worked. It had actually worked. He had brought Asami Ryuichi to heel, all over that skinny, big-eyed kid. He had pulled in every favor owed him, sold secrets and trusts and made more new enemies than he cared to consider, but it had worked.

He sank back into the shadows of the bushes as the kid himself emerged from the parking garage across the street, riding a motor scooter and watched him pull out into traffic without a pang of remorse. He was only a tool to be used, and it's not like he was some naïve child. He was asking for it, fooling around with someone like Asami. There were no innocent bystanders in Asami's world.

The motor scooter disappeared down the street, followed shortly by a plain black car with tinted windows. Breathing shallowly to keep down his agitation, Sagawa waited for the second wave of security, two men in black suits who made a slow sweep of the entire perimeter of the building. Asami's guard was up, no mistake.

The trick now would be to keep the pressure on without getting caught. To be caught now would mean death. It was going to be death either way, but not until he got what he wanted.

###

"So that's what, now? Twice in how many months you've disappeared?"

Akihito stood in front of the editor's desk like a high school reprobate before the principal, a position he was a little too familiar with and had hoped he'd outgrown. The fact that this wasn't his fault but he couldn't say so burned in him.

"I like you, Takaba," the editor said, "but I need photographers I can count on."

"You can count on me to get the kinds of shots nobody else can get."

He'd prepared this argument ahead of time, but the editor only shook his head.

"I have all the photographers I need right now."

The editor turned back to his computer in a clear gesture of dismissal. Akihito chewed his lip and remembered his blithe claim that he would just keep talking until the editor gave in. Wearing people down verbally was a useful talent.

"Give me another chance," he said. "What if I bring in a big scoop, something nobody else has? You won't say no then, right? I mean, that's what you're looking for, big news and you know I can give you that."

The editor sighed and turned back around.

"I'm gonna do you a favor and be straight with you. Spoiled kids like you, you're used to always getting your own way, and you don't know how to handle it when you don't. So I'm going to give you a life lesson and say no. I can't use you. I'm sorry."

Akihito bit back an angry retort. Spoiled, him? Maybe—maybe a hundred years ago he was. The editor was way too late to try teach him a lesson he'd already learned by Asami's hand. But that, too, he could not admit.

"I know what you're doing," he said, bluffing it out. "You just want me to prove that I'm really serious, right? That no matter what anyone says, if I'm really passionate, I won't let that stop me."

The editor shook his head and took a drag from a stub of a cigar.

"You're going to force me to be blunt, aren't you?" he said. "Okay then. I took you on because of your old man, but to be honest, I don't think you have what it takes for this line of work. If you did, we wouldn't be having this conversation every few months."

"I told you—my mom was sick."

It sounded lame even to him, sticking in his throat like a dry crust.

"Yeah, so you said. Look, I don't want to kick you when you're down, but maybe I can save you years of frustration. If you can't commit yourself completely to the work, then you need to stop wasting my time and yours. Find something else."

Akihito stood dumbstruck, his agile tongue paralyzed.

"You're wrong," was all he could think to say.

"Maybe." The editor shrugged. "But I've been in this business a lot longer than you have, and I've seen a lot of photographers come and go, and I'm telling you: this isn't for you."

The editor's words landed like physical blows to Akihito's gut, and he had to take a long, shaky breath to steady himself, to stop himself from launching across the editor's desk, grabbing the other man by the shirtfront and returning real blows in answer to his words. He balled his hands into fists.

"You're wrong," he repeated, his voice rough.

The editor stubbed out his cigar and waved the smoke away, as if he'd like to do the same to Akihito.

"Yeah, okay. And I'll regret it some day when you're a famous member of Magnum. But for now, I've got work to do, so I'm going to ask you to leave."

Leave? He couldn't move. How could he just walk away from his lifelong dream? What kind of bastard would tell him to? The editor frowned, his brows coming together.

"Come on, kid. Make this easy on both of us. Don't make me call security."

For a second, Akihito wondered wildly why he should make anything easy for anyone when nothing was ever easy for him. He turned stiff-legged and stalked out into the newsroom. He stood there, eyes closed, swaying against the feeling that the room had begun to spin around him. Gods, he couldn't pass out here. He opened his eyes and saw a woman at the nearest desk staring at him with an infuriating combination of pity and distaste. Did he look like that much of a hopeless case? Probably. He could feel his eyes burning with it. Outside, he knew, one of Asami's men was waiting. If he went out now, like this, it would almost surely be reported back to Asami.

He made his way blindly down the hall to the men's room, the noise of the newsroom fading beyond the door. Bending over the sink, he turned on the cold water, filled his cupped hands and let his face sink into it, feeling the heat leach out of his skin but not the thorn in his chest.

"I can't talk now. Someone just came in."

He knew that voice. Mitarai was in one of the stalls behind him.

"I don't have a good signal anyway. Just text it to me. Yeah. Text it. Text it. The address. What the hell? Are you deaf? Text me the address!"

Akihito straightened, stared at his dripping face in the mirror. Mitarai was talking to a source. He had a tipoff. Would he share, like before? Not if he knew the boss had just dumped him. He made a quick decision.

Grabbing a handful of paper towels, he made a big show of rubbing his face dry, just as Mitarai came out of the stall. With carefully calculated carelessness, Akihito turned and slammed hard into the other man.

"What the hell?! Watch where you're going!"

The paper towels dropped in a flutter as Akihito stumbled and clutched at Mitarai to keep from falling.

"Sorry! Didn't see you."

"I should have known," Mitarai said, shoving him away. "You're a walking disaster, Takaba."

"Uh, you ran into me," Akihito said. "Good thing I don't expect anything like manners out of you."

Mitarai grunted. "What are you doing here, anyway? I thought we saw the last of you."

"In your dreams, maybe. See ya!"

Akihito bolted for the door, the familiar rush of adrenaline jetting through him. He waited until he was in the elevator and the doors closed before he reached into his pocket and pulled out the cellphone he had lifted from Mitarai and looked at the screen. One new message. He tapped it up, not recognizing the sender's name. The message itself seemed like it was in gibberish, but Akihito knew it was code. The same one Mitarai had used with him when they were collaborating. It only took four floors to work out the time and address of whatever it was that was going down. Midnight at a warehouse down by the docks. Not too far, actually, from where he'd been sent to spy on Asami that fatal night. A sign? Or a warning? He laughed quietly to himself.

Okay, he knew where and when but he didn't know who would be there or what it was all about. He hunted back through Mitarai's messages, looking for the same sender's name but nothing came up. The elevator doors opened, and he stepped quickly across the lobby and out into the late afternoon sun, still scrolling through contact lists as he ducked into the homeward bound crowds on the sidewalk, hoping to evade Mitarai if he came after him.

Nothing! He pulled up the browser and searched through the history. There it was. The name of a prominent Diet member came up in several searches in the last two days, as well as a quite a few searches on a foreign materials supplier that had just gotten a big government contract. Bribery? Blackmail? Whatever it was, it would be enough to get him back in. The adrenaline was surging for real now, his hands shaking with it. He shut off Mitarai's phone just as his own buzzed in his pocket.

He pulled it out and smiled to see Asami's name accompanied by a stern, official portrait in place of the old photo of him sleeping next to the stuffed animal head. So Asami had known. Of course he had known, just like he knew the meeting with the editor was over. But he would not know what happened in that meeting. Akihito made his voice deliberately upbeat.

"Hey, yeah, I was just going to call you."

" _You promised to tell me how it went_."

"You mean you didn't have a hidden camera recording the whole thing?"

" _Should I have_?" Akihito could practically see the smirk. " _I've seen your office manners, first hand_."

"I was drugged that time!" Akihito shouted, drawing a couple of stares from passers-by. "You're never going to let me forget that, are you? You suck."

" _That is one of my specialties_."

"You're disgusting. I'm hanging up," Akihito said. "But first, I've got a stakeout tonight. Can you call off your hounds?"

Silence.

" _Tsuba is a professional. He won't get in your way_."

Akihito frowned. How long would it take for Asami to relax his guard?

"Fine," he said. "I'll just shake him off."

" _You can try_."

Asami and his arrogant confidence that everything would go his way, but he had no intention of being tailed tonight, regardless of what Asami wanted.

"If that's a dare, you're on."

" _Standard penalties apply_."

"Go back to work!"

He hung up and walked thoughtfully to where he'd left his Vespa. There had been something a little over confident in Asami's tone. After all, Akihito had never had trouble losing the tails Asami had tried to place on him in the past. What was different about this guy? Was he some kind of specialist?

With plenty of time before he had to be in place for the stakeout, Akihito decided to take a test run. On the motor scooter, it wasn't even really a contest. He could dart in and out of traffic far more easily than the black sedan that was following him. Unless the guard switched to a bike himself or was part of a city-wide network, ditching him would be no problem. In rush hour traffic, it was a snap. Akihito lost him in less than ten minutes.

This was something he was good at. This was something he could still do. With a certain smug satisfaction, he pulled up to a ramen stand to get something to eat. For the first time since he'd been back, food actually tasted good. He was considering ordering a second bowl when the black sedan appeared on the other side of the street.

 _Shit_.

Okay, so this guy wanted to play. Akihito hopped back on his scooter and darted off in the opposite direction than the sedan was pointed. Swooping in and out of traffic, he doubled back through Kyobashi before heading south and shooting across Shinbashi. He ducked into a park, where he could see the road but not be seen and waited. Within fifteen minutes, the sedan pulled up directly opposite his position.

Son of a bitch. He was being electronically tracked. Back on his Vespa, he wove through a maze of neighborhoods and side streets until even he wasn't sure where he was. He drifted into a quiet alley and got off his scooter and began to search. Where was it? He checked the Vespa all over, inside his helmet. He started patting down his clothes and felt the two cellphones in his pocket.

Of course. The new cellphone.

He dug it out and turned it over in his hand. Throw this one in the bay, Asami had said. He ought to do it right now. If there was a tracker in it, he had no idea how to disable it. Just turning it off or taking out the battery probably wouldn't do it. Asami was too smart for that.

He had to dump it somewhere. The bay was too close to where he eventually wanted to end up, so he headed north again and tossed it over the fence of the Ueno Zoo.

###

"Asami-sama?"

Asami looked up from the reports he had been reading. Kirishima stood in front of his desk, a look of mingled concern and irritation that could only be Akihito-related.

"What is it?" Asami asked. "No, let me guess. They've lost him."

"Tsuba reports that he tracked the signal from the phone but was unable to locate either Takaba or the phone at the final location. I've sent Inaba back out to help him search."

"Where was the final location?"

"The Ueno Zoo."

A corner of Asami's mouth tilted upward in spite of himself and he felt a strange little lilt of pleasure bubble through him. This was the Akihito that amused him the most: reckless, obstinate, hare-brained, underscoring everything he did with a signature that was indelibly his own.

"The zoo, I take it, is closed?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

He smothered a chuckle of converse delight. Maddening though he was, this was the Akihito he wanted.

However, the hard fact remained that Akihito was still at risk.

"Any word on Sagawa?" he asked, sobering.

"As a matter of fact…" Kirishima placed a photo on the desk. "I was just printing this out when Tsuba called. It's from security footage at the Grand Hills building, time stamp 2:58 this afternoon, shortly after Takaba left for his meeting."

A crease formed between Asami's brows as he looked at the photo of Sagawa, standing where Akihito had been only minutes before.

"What did he do? Did he go inside?"

"No, sir," Kirishima said. "Footage shows him walking along the front of the building and then crossing the street. That's where the cameras lost him."

Asami swore under his breath.

"Anything from Haneda?"

"Nothing yet."

"Contact them again." Asami turned the photo face down on his desk. "Tell them to broaden the search, throw whatever they have to at it. Find Sagawa Kenji."

Before his brother found Akihito again.

###

With an hour to go, Akihito had found a good, hidden vantage point and made himself as comfortable as possible to wait it out. His motor scooter was parked blocks away, just in case he had missed any tracking devices on it. He settled in.

The worst part of waiting around like this was the fact that more often than not, it was wasted. Nothing happened. Tips were wrong. People chickened out. But he had a feeling about this one. This was his, it was meant for him. It was going to be big, and just maybe he'd take it to a different magazine and then that editor could eat his mocking words and choke on them.

He was enjoying the thought of the editor turning blue with rage when he heard the sound of feet behind him and someone snarled.

"You little piece of shit!"

He was too tucked into his hiding place to move quickly enough to evade the fist that grabbed the back of his shirt. Another hand came down hard over his mouth and pure, mindless panic took over. He thrashed wildly as he was dragged across the pavement, a confused impression of multiple hands and legs around him and then a booted foot made contact with his ribcage and he doubled up, throwing his arms over his head as more blows fell.


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: I'm very nervous about this chapter. Please keep in mind that you were warned that this story was dark and angsty. Very angsty.

 **Chapter 8**

Leaving the scooter four blocks away hadn't been the best idea he'd ever had. Neither had stealing Mitarai's phone, as it turned out. Stupid. When had he gotten so stupid?

He was so pissed at himself for letting his guard down. That asshole Mitarai and whoever that thug was that he brought with him only had the upper hand because he was still so out of shape and because they'd surprised him. No, that was a lie. They'd scared the hell out of him. Everything he thought he'd pushed aside or truly believed he could not remember came back with a wallop at the feeling of that hand over his mouth. All the terror, all the panic he had tried to blank out boiled up again, maybe even more panic than he had felt at the time because he knew now what it meant. He knew that he hadn't been able to escape. He couldn't fight back. And he knew what had happened then. The rooms, those dark rooms—and the men—

He had to stop—one hand against a wall, the other clutching his shirt—and bend over because some vital mechanism involved in breathing had stopped working. _Not this again_. He gasped, tried sucking in air but nothing happened. The panic spread and the sidewalk blurred and spun under him.

"Ha! Ha!"

 _Breathe_!

"Are you all right, young man?"

The words were muffled and he couldn't respond, his voice crushed under the weight of airlessness. Couldn't straighten, couldn't see who it was. But when a hand touched his shoulder, he erupted like an animal in a trap, flinging the man's hand away and casting himself up hard against the wall. The shock of his back connecting painfully with cement knocked something loose and a sudden inrush of air filled his lungs.

"I'm fine," he croaked unconvincingly.

The man had stepped back, and the stream of pedestrians on the sidewalk made a wide circle around them.

"I didn't mean to scare you," the man said. "You ought to go to a hospital."

"Unh." Akihito shook his head. "I'm okay." He pulled in a heaving gasp. "Really."

"Do you need help getting home?"

Another shake of his head.

"No, thanks. I—I don't live far."

Dubious but probably also relieved, the man went on his way. Akihito pushed away from the wall and into the stream of people. _Just walk_ , he told himself. _Just keep walking_. He made it to the garage where he had left his scooter, dark and blessedly quiet and free of officious passers-by. He mounted his bike and then slumped forward, arms folded on the handlebars, and sat breathing for a moment. He was okay. He could breathe. He wasn't even badly hurt. When they saw he wasn't fighting back, Mitarai and his friend had let him go. He just had to…what? Figure out what to do next.

He started the Vespa and pulled out of the garage, aiming mindlessly away from the bay, no idea where he was really headed. He rode, feeling the air stream over his skin, the sway of the scooter as he wove between cars and dodged pedestrians, seeking some measure of control in the mess his life had become.

Stopped at a traffic light in Shinjuku, he looked up to see that he was next to the Sion Corp. building. Most of the windows were dark but twenty stories up, he knew the lights of Asami's office were still burning. How easy it would be to just pull over and go inside. He'd be let in. The secretary knew him now. And once inside, all he would have to do would be to ask, and Asami would wipe it all away. With his hands, his lips and his cock, he would make it so that nothing else mattered. It would be so easy…

The squawk of a horn behind him made him jump. The light had changed and he was holding up traffic. He lifted his feet and sped away, not ready to face Asami just yet. Not ready to answer questions about how his day had gone since it had gone absolutely shitty. Didn't want to have to tell Asami what had happened. Asami might have been joking about sending men in to rough up the editor, but with Asami, you could never be sure. And gods help Mitarai if Akihito told that little story to Asami.

No doubt Asami could fix this, too, fix everything, make the editor take him back. Hell, he'd probably just buy the whole magazine if Akihito asked him to, jump him up to editor, but that would be little different than being a kept man. He had to be able to build his own life, or he would lose himself completely in Asami's orbit. He just didn't know how he was going to do that now.

He rode back to the condo building but instead of heading into the garage, he pulled up instead at a little park a block away and sat on the edge of a cement planter, staring at what he could see of the luxury high rise above the trees in the park. Ordinarily, someone like him would only be welcome in a place like that if he was delivering sushi. How had he ended up there, so very far from where he had been aiming?

And how crazy was it that he had stayed? Twice now, his life had been completely wrecked because he could not stay away from this man. Yet he kept coming back. Asami himself had told him as much.

 _Didn't I tell you? You can never escape from me._

Akihito had thought then that Asami meant he would physically stop him from leaving, would drag him back if he tried to escape. Now he knew the true meaning of those words. It wasn't Asami who would stop him. It was Akihito himself. Asami knew how it would be.

 _You've been down this road before._

He'd warned him how many times?

 _There'll be sweeter nectar for you if you stay close to me._

But that nectar is poisoned, right?

 _Even that will become habit-forming in time._

It was what he craved now, the oblivion of Asami's arms, drugged nectar kisses that would make everything else fade.

 _Make me forget._

But what kind of man was he if he couldn't do this on his own? If he couldn't function, couldn't handle pain or disappointment without Asami?

 _Heroin only feels good to those who are unable to find pleasure on their own._

If Asami was his heroin?

He couldn't think. If he could just forget everything for a while, let his mind rest, maybe he could figure it out. He pulled his legs up, leaned his forehead on his knees and wrapped his arms around his head to shut out the voices.

 _Asami_ …

"You look like you're really hurting."

He didn't jump this time, just sat up slowly. Next to him, a man leaned against the planter and smiled.

"What do you need?" he asked.

Akihito shook his head.

"Nothing, thanks."

"Blow? X?" the man said. "I'll give you a good price."

He ought to go. He needed to move, but he couldn't take his eyes off the man, not even aware he was holding his breath until the man finally said:

"Or you need something else, huh? You need some heroin?"

Gods. His heartbeat thrummed in his ears, trembled his hands. He wouldn't even know what to do with it, how to do it. It had only ever been done to him.

"I have some good stuff, Chinese white."

A dark memory, fighting against the bite of the needle, the taste in his mouth the first sign that he'd lost and then everything that hurt was gone.

"What do you say?" The man leaned closer.

Just this one time, if it meant this feeling would go away, just for a little while. Akihito swallowed hard and nodded his head.

"That's right," the man said. "I knew I'd have what you wanted. Only twelve-thousand a bundle."

Akihito almost laughed, except he thought it would come out as a sob. This was like some kind of sick joke. He had exactly twenty-five hundred yen to his name.

"I don't have that much," he said.

"Shit." The man stopped smiling, pushed away from the planter.

"Wait!" Akihito dug in his pocket and pulled out his money. "How much can I get for that?"

He didn't even know what a bundle was but it sounded like more than he needed. He only wanted enough for once. Just to get him through the rest of this fucking awful night

"Sorry," the man said. "You have to buy the whole bundle."

He started to walk away.

"Please!"

 _They made me beg for it._

"You're killing me." The man sighed. "Okay, but just because I like you. Two bags. Next time, though, you'd better have enough money."

There wouldn't be a next time. Akihito handed over the cash.

###

"If you don't like the terms, by all means, you are free to find another supplier," Asami said with casual coldness. "If you can."

" _You're a shark_ ," the man on the other end of the call said.

Hardly the worst thing he'd ever been called.

"I only charge what the market will bear. I have two other buyers willing to meet that price, one who would probably go even higher if he knew I was offering it to you first. You might be surprised to know who he is. I think you've done business with him before."

Silence from the other end, and then the sound of ice being dropped into a glass. That shot had hit home as Asami knew it would.

" _You win_."

"I prefer to think of it as simple economics. I'll have my secretary arrange transport as soon as you transfer the funds."

Some people were simply too easy to manipulate.

He ended the call, got up and poured himself a glass of scotch and stood looking out over the city. Somewhere out there, one of those little lights was Akihito. That he didn't know where concerned and annoyed him but also lit the fire of a libido he couldn't name, unless it was Akihito himself. The boy was easy to read in so many ways and yet still able to surprise him. A mind he could read and yet never fully predict was a mental aphrodisiac more powerful than anything he had known.

" _Asami-sama_?" Kirishima's voice came over the intercom.

"Yes?"

" _Goto reports that Takaba has returned to the Grand Hills building_."

"All in one piece?" The faint sarcastic edge of his voice covered real relief.

" _Yes, sir_."

A slow exhale and a deep swallow of scotch, and the muscles across his shoulders began to unknot. He had been right not to tell Akihito about Sagawa. If Asami had learned anything about his lover, it was how important even the illusion of agency was to him. Right now, that was an illusion he had to shield.

" _Should I order the car_?" Kirishima asked.

"No, not yet. Bring me the file on the Aikawa Group."

Akihito was home, safe. He could focus on work for a little while longer.

###

The insistent throbbing bass of electronic dance music played too loud met Asami as he stepped off the elevator. He allowed himself a little, inward smile. The stakeout must have gone well. Akihito would be pumped with excess energy from the high of a good night's work, energy it would be his pleasure to help him work off.

He glanced at Goto, stationed by the door, who raised an eloquent eyebrow in return.

"You can knock off for the night," Asami said.

Goto nodded.

Asami entered the apartment and slipped off his shoes, catching a whiff of something odd. If it was dinner, it didn't exactly smell appealing. The music was so loud, he could feel the thump of the bass in his chest. He headed for the living room to turn the stereo system down a bit and stopped in confusion at the sight of a blond head, just visible on the floor by the sofa.

He was asleep. He just fell asleep. But that smell…

Asami crossed the room in three long strides, taking in the lighter and spoon on the coffee table and the shoestring on the floor.

Shit. _Shit._

He dropped to his knees and took Akihito's head between his hands.

"Akihito! Do you hear me? Open your eyes!"

Nothing. The borders of the boy's lips were beginning to turn blue. He pressed his fingers against the base of Akihito's throat, not sure if what he felt was the faint thrum of a pulse or the damned music.

 _Shit._

The naloxone. Where had he put it after that night? He got to his feet, pulling out his phone.

"Suoh. Bring the car back around." He stalked into the kitchen and started yanking open drawers. "And send Goto back up here. Right away."

Nothing in the drawers. Wait, no, Akihito had found it. That's what had triggered that earthquake. It was in the panic room.

He moved now with deliberate intent, only allowing himself to think one move ahead. Find the naloxone. In the panic room. There it was on the table.

Back in the living room, he knelt again. Akihito still was not breathing. With a hand under the boy's neck, Asami tilted Akihito's head back. Pinching Akihito's nose closed with the other hand, he bent and placed his lips over the blue ones and breathed, once, twice. Nothing.

 _Gods, that music!_

He shook the three syringes onto the table, picked one up and pulled the cap off with his teeth. In theory, he knew what to do and held to his one-step-at-a-time approach, pushing the sleeve of Akihito's t-shirt up over his shoulder and darting the needle straight into the muscle. If it was going to work, it would work quickly. He bent and breathed for Akihito again, waiting between each breath for a return.

 _Dammit!_

The door to the apartment burst open and both Suoh and Goto bolted through, guns drawn.

"He overdosed!" Asami shouted over the music. "Call Nagato!"

He flung his phone at Suoh, who trapped it against his chest.

"And one of you turn off that fucking music!"

Silence swelled through the room like a physical force. Suoh's voice boomed over it.

"… _overdosed_!"

"Tell her I gave him one dose of naloxone but he's not breathing."

Speak. Pass information. Do not think beyond that. Suoh relayed his words to Dr. Nagato.

"Does he have a pulse?" Suoh asked.

Asami pressed his fingers again to Akihito's throat and this time felt the faint but measured rush of Akihito's blood in the artery.

"Yes."

"She says give him another dose. Continue rescue breathing."

Goto had gone down on one knee next to Asami, handed him another syringe. Asami injected it into Akihito's shoulder, fighting down a rising panic. There was only one syringe left. Only one more step until there was nothing left to think of, to plan, to keep his mind from going wild.

He bent again to lips he knew in all their sweetness and aggravation.

"Come on." He breathed and turned his head to listen, to feel. "Breathe."

Another terrible kiss, another breath.

"Don't think for a minute—" And again, against lips still soft and warm. "—Í will let you go so easily."

Akihito convulsed under him, his back arching off the floor as a thick clot of vomit bubbled from his mouth and he choked on a desperate inhale.

"Ah, god!"

Together, Asami and Goto rolled Akihito gasping and coughing onto his side.

"Get him to the clinic, she says." Suoh took off his own coat and threw it over Akihito. "She'll meet us there."

Asami gathered Akihito into his arms, his head cradled against his shoulder. He had not regained consciousness, and his breath came in a shallow, gurgling wheeze.

"You don't get to leave me," Asami murmured. "Not like this."

###

Sagawa stepped out of the bushes, watching as Asami eased the limp body of the boy into the back of the car. No, no, no. This was not the way it was supposed to go down! 

* * *

A/N: Please don't hate me for doing this to Akihito. I promise, promise, promise a lovely, happy, sexy ending. Eventually.

Also, I have made up all these extra mooks because I always feel sorry for Kirishima and Suoh, who never seem to get time off.

Thank you again to everyone who has been reading along and leaving reviews. I appreciate the feedback greatly!


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

The clinic had always been a deal with the devil, but it was her baby. Her little, illegitimate, half-demon baby.

The health care system in her country was a good one, but for one reason or another, there were those who fell through the cracks, and her clinic provided care for as many of the lost ones as she could reach. Not just bare bones care, either. Her clinic was supplied and staffed with only the best. The devil was generous, he could afford to be. So long as she was prepared to treat whoever he brought to her doorstep, for whatever cause, without question and with utmost discretion, she could do what she liked with the facilities he placed at her disposal.

When treating knife and gunshot wounds, she told herself not to think of the other parties involved, not to think of the damage caused by these men, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to convince herself that the good work she was allowed to do could in any way balance out the darkness that paid for it, never more so than when she stripped off her rubber gloves and stepped out of the trauma room where Takaba Akihito lay with a breathing tube down his throat.

And so it was most unexpected, the little pang somewhere in the left upper quadrant of her chest at the sight of the devil himself sitting bent over in a chair in the hall, his head in his hands. She had seen him stand over men who had been gutted by knives, had holes blown through them by guns—mangled, mutilated men—without the faintest crack in the icy mask he presented to the world. This man who had molded the world to suit himself was now bowed by what had happened to the slender young man in the trauma room, by what he had not been able to prevent.

He stood when he saw her coming and ran a hand through his disheveled hair. Dark-suited men with the same strange impassive intensity as their boss were stationed at each end of the corridor and by the trauma room door, their presence spreading a chilling miasma in the quiet hall.

Asami watched the doctor, shaken by the expression on her face, something a little too close to sympathy.

"Well?" he asked, when she was standing in front of him.

"The heroin was cut with fentanyl," she said. "It amplifies the potency—and the risk of overdose. He probably didn't know."

"Probably? You mean he hasn't come around?"

"We had to intubate him, so he's been sedated."

"What does that mean? He can't breathe on his own?"

Asami reached automatically for the cigarettes in his breast pocket, remembered where he was and let his hand fall to his side, fingers twitching.

"No," Nagato said. "He has aspiration pneumonitis. He aspirated—inhaled some of the vomitus when he threw up. The ventilator is a support measure to keep his oxygen levels up."

Asami's insides twisted around an unbidden image of Akihito on the floor of the apartment, gasping and choking. He hadn't been quick enough. He ought to have known. No! You could drive yourself mad playing the "if only" game. If only he hadn't stayed at work. If only he'd had the damned tracking device planted under the kid's skin. There were too many ways to second guess yourself and once you started doing that, you questioned every move and that led to disaster. That's why he projected forward only. Not what might have been but what next.

He stared past the doctor to the door to the trauma room, the need to see Akihito for himself almost pulling him across the floor. But this "what next" was beyond his scope to control or effect.

"Pneumonitis. The same as pneumonia?"

"No," Nagato said. "It's not an infection. It's an inflammation of the lungs. It could develop into pneumonia but that's unlikely. However, it could lead to acute respiratory distress."

"But you can treat it before that happens."

"We can try," she said. "Does he have family?" Something about Takaba suggested the image of a stray, with no connections of his own.

"What?" Asami turned back to her.

"His parents need to be notified."

Parents? Of course Akihito had parents. Asami had heard him mention his mother a number of times and knew he idolized his father, but beyond that, Asami had given them little thought. They were far outside of the world he had drawn their son into. Their son. The possessive phrase ignited everything predatory in his nature.

"Why?"

Nagato stared at him, her eyes large behind her glasses.

"Because they are his parents," she said slowly, as though speaking to someone of limited understanding. "They ought to be here."

Why, he wanted to ask again. What purpose would it serve? But more importantly…

"He wouldn't want them to see him like this," he said, eyes still on the trauma room door.

"I understand that, but the situation—" Nagato drew a breath and let it out in an unhappy rush. "If this progresses to acute respiratory distress, he could die."

Asami's head snapped around as though she had slapped him, his ears ringing with the blow.

"What?"

"We're doing our best to make sure that doesn't happen," she said, staring up at him earnestly, "but I won't lie to you. His condition is critical."

What? He stared at her in an obtuse fog, unable to process what she was saying. Unwilling to believe it was true. That Akihito with his boundless tenacity could be extinguished from the inside out—it wasn't possible. The fog lay over him, numbing him, making him feel stupid and slow so that his usually agile mind fumbled for a response and could come up with nothing.

"This sort of thing develops very quickly," Nagato said, "within twenty-four to thirty-six hours. It's best if we contact his parents immediately."

Immediately. Before it was too late. Would he want that? Asami pushed his way through the fog, desperate to light on the right answer. What would Akihito want? He knew what he wanted, to shout everyone out of the place, to let no one near Akihito again. It would hurt the boy—deeply, he knew—for his parents to know about this. He had been so proud of what he had made of his life, after giving them so much trouble as a teen. How much did it matter now, his pride?

"If you give me their number, I will make the call," Nagato said. "Your name need not come into it."

There was that, too. Takaba's parents knew nothing of him, of their son's connection to him. That much, at least, could be concealed.

"No," he said. "I'll take care of it."

They both turned then at the sound of footsteps to see Kirishima coming down the hall. Asami excused himself to the doctor and pulled his assistant aside.

"What have you got?"

"Little at the moment," Kirishima said. "I've put out traces on any known dealers in the area of the Grand Hills building and am cross referencing them against those Sagawa was known to be in contact with. If it was a deliberate plant, though, it's possible it was someone from another territory."

"Then the local dealers would know," Asami said, "if they have any control over their territories at all."

"Difficult to make them give up names."

"Lean on them."

Kirishima recognized the sharp edge to that voice.

"I want to know who sold to Takaba and why." The edge hardened. "And once he's told us where Sagawa is, I want him dead."

"Yes, sir."

"One more thing." Asami's voice dropped, softened. "We have an address for Takaba's parents, correct?"

"Of course."

"Take a car—I want you to go yourself—and bring them back here, as soon as you can."

Kirishima sucked in an audible breath and looked at Asami, shock clear on his face.

"Is Takaba—"

"Tell them Takaba is very ill," Asami cut him off, "and they need to come at once. If they ask who you are, you have been sent by Takaba's employer."

Kirishima's own businesslike mask fell back into place.

"Yes, sir."

When he had gone, Asami turned back to Nagato.

"Is there any way," he said over his shoulder, "to discuss his condition and treatment without telling them about the heroin? Can you give him that much?"

"It would be almost impossible."

And they would never believe the truth, if there was any way to tell them without revealing too much, more than Akihito would want them to know.

"If you want to slip out before they arrive," Nagato said quietly, carefully, "I promise to provide you with updates as often as you want."

"I have no intention of slipping out." He would not consider the possibility.

He crossed the hall and Suoh held the door of the trauma room for him. Inside, he felt an iron band tighten across his chest. Akihito lay on a bed with the head raised slightly, tubes protruding from his mouth and nose and taped to the side of his face. The room was filled with the soft, rhythmic click and whirr of the ventilator that pushed oxygen into his tortured lungs. On the other side of the bed, a nurse typed on a computer. She looked up when Asami came in and bowed.

"Can you leave us for a minute?"

"Of course," she said. "Press the call button if you need anything."

When she had gone, he pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat, arms propped on his thighs and watched the rise and fall of Akihito's chest. The boy's eyes were closed, lashes casting shadows on his pale cheeks, his sweet mouth distorted by the thick plastic tube. Unconscious, pulled away from him now by a different kind of drug, threatened by a danger that would not yield to his power. He could kill every dealer in Tokyo and it would make no difference. Plant or not, whoever the dealer was, he had only placed the heroin in Akihito's hands. Something else had driven him to use it.

"You told me once," Asami said in a low voice, "to tie a rope around you and lock you up." He laughed and rubbed a hand across his face. "I should have taken you at your word. Instead, I got angry. Did you ever understand why?"

He reached and traced his fingers down the soft skin on the inside of Akihito's forearm and across the palm of his upturned hand, the fingers curled and unresponsive to his touch.

"It wasn't simply that I never wanted to lock you away," he said. "I love your stubborn independence too much to cage it up. No, I was angry because I thought you had finally come to me of your own will, and that you would stay with me because—" A wry little laugh escaped him. "—because you wanted it as much as I did."

He stopped, almost habitually, waiting for the barrage of protests and arguments and outraged vows but the only other sound in the room was that soft click and whirr. Asami took Akihito's limp hand into both of his and raised it to his lips.

"Why didn't you come to me this time?"

###

He wasn't sure how long he sat, Akihito's fingers pressed to his lips, the monotonous pulse of the ventilator lulling him into an almost drugged state, so that he had to shake himself at the sound of a polite knock on the door. He twisted to see Suoh open the door and stick his head into the room.

"They're here."

"All right."

Asami laid Akihito's hand back on the bed.

"If I was going to put you in a cage," he said, "now would be the time to do it. Bolt that door and not let anyone else near you, not even them."

He sighed and let his fingers drift across the cropped blond hair.

"You're going to hate this," he murmured. "You're going to hate me."

He stood and straightened his vest and tie with a few sharp tugs.

"Well, time to meet the in laws."

###

Sagawa frowned at the name on his cell screen. He'd been ignoring the call. Had ignored it four times now, but it was clear the caller wasn't going to give up. With shaking hands, he answered.

"What do you want?"

" _What the fuck are you playing at_?"

"Why are you calling me?"

" _You told me this was a joke! You didn't tell me who that kid was! I've got Asami Fucking Ryuichi on my ass! Do you know what that means? I'm as good as dead!_ "

"Listen! Don't do anything stupid! He doesn't know who you are."

" _Like fuck! His people are breaking kneecaps as we speak. How long do you think before someone gives me up? He already knows who you are! That kid dies and you better hope all he does to you is kill you_."

"What do you mean, dies?"

" _It's all over town, that kid's in a coma or something and Asami's out for blood_."

The image of that limp body being put into the limo flashed in his mind.

"What did you give him?"

" _What I sell to everyone. Maybe there was something in it, I don't know. The kid was such a dumbass, he didn't even know how to use it. I told him to Google it. I had to give him a fucking syringe! Probably has my fucking fingerprints all over it!_ "

"Calm down! He's hardly going to go to the police."

" _Fuck the police! If that kid dies, that's it. We're both dead!_ "

Sagawa put the phone on the pavement and stomped on it with his foot until it shattered. Dammit! The kid wasn't supposed to die. He was just supposed to scare Asami enough to keep him searching.

Now what?

###

Akihito's mother preceded her husband down the hall, moving with a quick but lithe gate Asami knew well. It was clear, too, where Akihito got his looks; his mother's fine bones and wide brown eyes sent a painful echo through Asami's chest. But there was something of him in the father, too. Asami recognized that level, seeking gaze he'd stared down often enough when Akihito was trying to puzzle something out. So these were the people who had somehow come together and created Akihito. His Akihito. A surge of blank jealousy wiped out any sense of gratitude.

He was able to study them because neither of them had noticed him, standing on the other side of the hall, a few feet away. They were both focused on Dr. Nagato, who met them outside of Akihito's room. Asami watched them as Nagato talked, outlining Akihito's condition. Akihito's mother's face was as expressive and open as her son's, apprehension quickly replaced by fear and then horror, telling Asami that no, Nagato had not been able to leave the hardest details out of her report.

At that, Takaba Sr. broke, his voice ringing down the hall.

"Are you telling me my son is an addict?!"

"That's not what I'm saying." Nagato tried to calm him. "There are circumstances that Takaba-kun will have to tell you himself. For now, you need to focus on helping him through this."

She shepherded them into Akihito's room. Asami watched them go, watched the door close, the sense of being shut out like a physical force, almost compelling him to push back. To stand, to do nothing was unbearable, to let these people who undoubtedly would feel their claim greater than his, take over, distract, divide, pull Akihito away from him after he had fought so hard to save him.

After fifteen long minutes, Nagato emerged alone and came to where he was standing.

"She's heartbroken," she said. "He is already suspicious. You are going to need every bit of your silver tongue to handle this one."

She gave him a half-hearted smile.

"And Takaba?" he asked.

"Holding his own."

He visibly sagged then, as though she had cut a string that was holding him rigid. She was moved to reach out and put her hand over his but could not quite do it and wondered who had been the last person who had dared—if anyone.

She would suggest that he go lie down—there was a room kept for him in the clinic—but she knew it was pointless. He would do what he would do. She left him standing there, wondering when she had developed such sympathy for the devil.

.

* * *

A/N: Sorry so late! I had to rewrite this chapter because it went off in a WEIRD direction. (You don't even want to know.) So I had to backup and get it back on track. Thank you for waiting and for staying with this story! There's still a ways to go but don't give up on these two. I won't!

Thank you to all who left such lovely reviews!


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

Damage control was not his specialty. Foresight, anticipating problems before they occurred, arranging events to produce the desired outcome, that's where he excelled. On the rare occasions things did not play out as planned, losses were accepted. He moved on. But when there was the potential for calamitous loss, you had to salvage what you could. And so he waited, mentally picking up the pieces of Akihito's fractured life and reassembling them into what he hoped was an explanation both believable and not as damaging as the truth.

By the time Akihito's parents emerged from his room, it was late morning. Asami had had enough time to make a number of calls and a few arrangements. The bodyguards had rotated out, Hidaka arriving to replace Goto by Akihito's door, dressed down in casual clothes so as not to attract attention. He drifted a few feet away when the door opened and Akihito's parents came out.

Asami watched them, a knife of jealousy slashing through him at the raw anguish on their faces. They loved Akihito. The knife turned and flashed and for a split second, he considered how quickly he could break them, break their trust in their son, turn the prepared lies into something darker, designed to destroy rather than conserve, send them away loving Akihito less. But the insanity of an instant passed and he stayed where he was, watching. He could not do that to Akihito.

He watched as they were approached by the police detective who—they did not know—was firmly in Asami's pocket, watched their faces as they listened to the script he himself had prepared, waited to see if they would accept the lies that would remove the burden of guilt and shame from Akihito while concealing his own involvement and their true connection.

Akihito, the detective told them, had been involved in a news investigation he was working on his own that had the potential to be a career-making scoop on the drug trade. As a result, he took great risks getting close to some dangerous characters. He had been found the night before, outside Club Arcadia. His cover had been blown and to prove himself, his target forced him to shoot up but something had gone wrong. The target dumped him outside the club. That much he had been able to tell them before he lost consciousness. Takaba-kun had been brought to the clinic because it was closer than the nearest trauma center. Everything else, the nature of the drug and its effects, the doctor would have explained. For the pièce de résistance, the detective presented a copy of the "official" police report.

"If he doesn't pull through," Nagato had said to Asami when he had sketched out the details for her, "they're going to expect a murder investigation. Oh, I see. You'll handle that as well. I don't really want to know more."

Neither did he—or rather, he preferred not to linger over the necessity. What, after all, would it matter then, whether they knew the truth or not?

Takaba Sr. took the police report, his eyes fixed on the detective's face, questioning, searching, like his son.

"Do you know who did this to him?"

The answer to that, Asami thought, was far too complex.

But the detective murmured official responses about ongoing investigations and promises to keep the Takabas informed. With a bow, he excused himself and walked down the hall. Akihito's mother leaned against her husband and sobbed.

"Not here, Miyumi," Takaba Sr. said, taking her by the shoulders and kissing her forehead.

When she had composed herself, Asami crossed to them, presenting his card.

"My apologies for disturbing you," he said. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Asami Ryuichi. Your son works for me."

Akihito's father frowned but accepted the card.

"Takaba Daichi," he said. "My wife, Takaba Miyumi."

Akihito's mother looked up at him through stricken eyes, Akihito's eyes, familiar and alien at once and so full of pain, it was a particular kind of torture to hold her gaze.

"You're his editor?" she asked tremulously.

"No. I own a number of nightclubs," Asami said. "Takaba-kun does freelance work for me, for the promotion of my clubs."

It wasn't a bad idea, actually. He checked a little smile at the thought of Akihito's explosive reaction to any such suggestion.

"Then you sent the car for us?" she asked.

Asami inclined his head.

"It was very kind of you."

"It was nothing. I hope you will allow me to assist you in any way that is in my power. I am, of course, very sorry for the circumstances."

He spoke with the formality of years of business dealings, purging his voice of any suggestion that he felt anything other than a remote sense of responsibility for the boy behind the door.

"My company maintains a suite for clients in a nearby hotel," he said. "You would honor me by making use of it. My driver can take you there now. You must be very tired."

"I couldn't leave Akihito," she said. "I'm too keyed up to sleep."

"Just to rest, then, or freshen up," Asami said. "It's only one street over. Dr. Nagato would contact you if anything changed and you would be back within minutes."

She turned to her husband, questioning.

"There are some calls I need to make," he said, folding the police report and tucking it into his pocket.

The number on the report would connect him with another detective who would, of course, back up the story. Asami smiled.

"Of course," he said. "My company will cover everything."

"That's not necessary," Takaba Sr. said. "It isn't your responsibility."

"Perhaps not," Asami said, "but I feel a sense of duty towards one of my employees. Please. Accept my offer."

When he had finally managed to convince them, he ushered them to the street outside the clinic, where he put them in the car and sent them on their way with a sense of liberation. But it was only a temporary reprieve. They would be back and he would be forced to step aside again. At least he had done his best to protect Akihito in the eyes of those he loved.

He turned back to the clinic, passing Hidaka, who had taken up a formal stance next to the trauma room door, back to the monotonous click and whirr of machine-driven life. He sat by the bed, his eyes tracing the lines of Akihito's pale face, pushing down the feeling of utter powerlessness. He was no stranger to waiting. He knew when to sit out a deal, when to hold back, how strategic delay could drive others to foolish mistakes and how simply being quiet could be a most powerful tool. But this was a different kind of wait, in which he had no active purpose, in which the key elements were beyond his command, in which this boy—who had never properly listened to him before—could not even hear him now. Nevertheless, he leaned in, his lips against Akihito's ear.

"You still owe me," he said. "I told you. You owe me lifetimes. Don't think I will let you off so easily."

###

"So you ran off the Takabas," Nagato asked. "How did you manage that?"

Asami sat up, looked at his watch. Just past three. Only thirteen hours since they'd brought Akihito here. It felt like a week.

"I sent them to a hotel," he said.

"At the bottom of the bay?"

He frowned at her, which she returned with a shrug.

"Make yourself useful," she said. "Help me lean him forward."

Asami rose and took Akihito's shoulders in his hands, leaning the limp body against his chest, Akihito's head against his shoulder and watched as Nagato untied Akihito's hospital gown, put her stethoscope in her ears, pressed the diaphragm to his back and listened, moved it and listened again, up and down both sides of his back.

"All right," she said. "Put him back gently."

With a hand under Akihito's head, Asami eased him back onto the bed. Nagato slipped the business end of the scope down the front of his hospital gown.

"Someone ought to send you to a hotel," she said. "Or home."

"I'm not leav—"

"Shh!" She held up her finger, taking a perverse pleasure in getting away with shushing this formidable man. Her face turned serious, though, as she listened again. After a moment, she straightened and smiled. "His breath sounds are good."

She removed the tips of the stethoscope from her ears, hung it around her neck and pressed the call button for the nurse.

"He's better?" Asami asked.

"Improving," she said.

He let out a breath he wasn't aware he had been holding. The door opened and the nurse stuck her head in.

"Bring me an intubation tray," Nagato said.

"What are you going to do?" Asami asked.

"I'm going to take him off the respirator," she said. "The intubation tray is a precaution in case I'm wrong and we have to put him back on. You are going to have to step out while we do this because you're going to think we're hurting him, and I won't have you pulling a gun on my nurses. Go on. I'll let you back in as soon as we're done."

She all but pushed him into the hall where he stood, resisting the urge to pace. He needed a cigarette badly but having no idea how long it took to take someone off a respirator, didn't want to risk going outside. He was considering the very real alternative of knocking the bland look off Hidaka's face to relieve his tension when Kirishima came down the hall.

"What do you have?"

"We found the dealer," Kirishima said. "He was a small-timer working under Fujimori. He gave up Sagawa immediately but all he was able to provide was a phone number. I've put a trace on it, but it appears to have been disabled. The last ping placed him in Yotsuya. Before that, he was outside the Grand Hills location. That was at 2:15 this morning."

Asami stared blankly for a moment. That would have been right around the time…

"He was watching," he said. "He knew."

"The dealer insisted the goal was not to kill Takaba," Kirishima said. "That he had been told to provide Takaba with a bundle but in fact only sold him three bags because Takaba didn't have enough money. He said the heroin was not supplied by Sagawa but was from his own inventory, a new shipment he had received the day before. He claimed he did not know it was laced with fentanyl."

Was it plausible? He supposed it was, but if so, what was the goal? Why continue to target Akihito if the intent was not to kill? He still did not understand Sagawa's motive. He had turned away from Kirishima and now looked back over his shoulder.

"Past tense?" he asked.

"Yes, sir. He's dead."

Cold satisfaction iced through him.

"Find out what Sagawa was doing in Yotsuya," he said. "He's staying close. If he's not in a hotel, he's staying with someone. Someone will know him by sight."

"Yes, sir."

"And bring me a change of clothes. And a razor."

"Yes, sir." Kirishima hesitated. "Excuse me, sir, but have you eaten today?"

"What? No. Don't fuss at me, Kirishima."

Kirishima was about to suggest adding a large breakfast to the list when both men's attention was drawn by the opening of the trauma room door. Dr. Nagato came out and crossed to them.

"He's off the respirator," she said, "and breathing well on his own. We're going to keep him on oxygen for a little while longer, but there doesn't appear to be any serious damage to the lungs."

"So he'll be all right?" Asami asked.

She frowned.

"He'll recover from this incident," she said. "But he still has a problem. He wasn't held down and forced this time. He's going to have to find some way of dealing with that."

But Asami still could not accept the idea of Akihito as addict. If what he had just learned was true, then it was clear that this had not entirely been Akihito's choice. They did not know if Akihito was so desperate, so dependent that he would have gone looking for a hit on his own. No, if he hadn't been forced this time, he had at least been pushed.

Nagato sighed.

"Go on," she said. "He's awake but groggy. Don't chase the nurse out. She is there to monitor his breathing."

Awake. Breathing. Alive. Everything else could wait. He stepped around her but she called after him.

"His parents, Asami-sama?"

Yes, there was that. As it turned out, it hadn't been necessary to bring them into this. Their presence now would be more of a stressor than a comfort to Akihito.

"Send a car for them," he said to Kirishima. "But give me half an hour first."

Kirishima nodded and Asami went to Akihito.

He was sitting up in the raised bed, his head tipped back, an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, eyes closed. A nurse stood on the other side of the bed, watching monitors that beeped with quiet regularity, a more hopeful cadence than the sound of the respirator. Oblivious to her, Asami brushed the backs of his fingers across Akihito's cheek. Heavy eyelids quivered and shifted, finally lifting slightly, as though it was a physical effort.

"Asami?"

Hoarse from the breathing tube and muffled by the oxygen mask, it was still Akihito's voice, and it curled around his name with the same disarming sweetness it always had. At the sound of it, Asami's own breath caught and sharpened and made itself a little spear, sending a sharp pain through his chest.

"Yes," he said quietly. "I'm here."

"I'm sorry," Akihito whispered, the words almost lost, closed off by the mask.

"It doesn't matter," Asami said. Everything that had to be asked could wait. It wouldn't change anything, not in that moment.

Akihito squeezed his eyes tight, and his head tossed fitfully from side to side.

"Everything went wrong."

There it was. Asami knew there was more to the situation than Sagawa and his plant. Something else had happened. But those details could also wait.

"You'll fix it," he said. "You'll find a way. No one is more determined than you."

Akihito shook his head again. He struggled to swallow, his face twisting in pain.

"Throat hurts," he breathed.

"It's from being intubated," the nurse said. "It will pass."

He reached a shaky hand to the oxygen mask and tried to lift it away.

"Don't take it off," the nurse said. "Leave it in place."

Asami caught his wrist and pressed his hand back onto the bed.

"There's something you need to know," he said. "Your parents are here."

Akihito's eyes flew wide at that.

"What?"

The pace of the heart monitor picked up speed.

"You were very ill. Dr. Nagato insisted they be contacted."

"Noooo," Akihito moaned. "No, no, no."

"Listen to me," Asami said. "They don't know what happened, not what really happened. We've laid out a scenario for them. You were working on an investigation— _listen_ to me, Akihito!"

But Akihito's head turned again, back and forth, back and forth.

"I can't…I can't…"

"Yes you can. Look at me." Asami trapped Akihito's jaw in his broad hand, stopping his frantic movements. "Look at me."

"Sir," the nurse said. "It's not a good idea to upset him like this."

"He's going to be more upset if he doesn't hear me out before they get here," Asami said. "Akihito, you don't have to say anything. Let them talk. If they ask questions you can't answer, say you can't remember."

"My dad—" Akihito sucked in a breath, the oxygen mask turning white with condensation. "My dad was a journalist, Asami." He closed his eyes, took another breath. "He'll see through me. He always has."

"Not this time," Asami said. "They'll believe what they want to believe. Trust me on this. It's human nature."

Akihito opened his eyes and turned them on Asami, large, despairing, accusing.

"Why did you call them?"

Asami could not tell him the real reason, could not say _we thought you were going to die_. That wasn't something anyone heard lightly.

So instead, he said "I'm sorry."

Akihito jerked his chin out of Asami's fingers and turned away.

"Leave me alone."

"Not until you hear me." Asami reached for him again.

"I'll scream this place down if you don't."

"Akihito."

"Sir!" The nurse made a move as though she might throw herself between them.

The door opened and Kirishima entered. Asami spun around.

"What!?"

"Excuse me, Asami-sama, but the Takabas are here already. They took a taxi."

 _Shit_.

On the bed, Akihito had begun to sob quietly, each little catch of breath cutting a burning slash through Asami's chest, the need to push everyone out, to lock the door and take Akihito into his arms and make him understand almost unbearable. Every part of him rebelled at the thought of walking out now, giving Akihito over to someone else to comfort and care for, but he had no choice.

Asami straightened, swept a hand through his hair, pulling together what control he could.

"Akihito," he said. "Let them believe what they've been told. Trust me."

"Asami-sama," Kirishima said, holding the door, "if they find you here, they're bound to question it."

"Akihito?"

But there was no return, no response to the aching question in his voice. With stony self-command, Asami turned and walked out.

* * *

.  
Thank you so much for your patience! I know I left you at a terrible spot last chapter. Just had a little trouble with sequence of events here but I think I've got it rolling again. Thank you to everyone for reading and leaving lovely, helpful comments!


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: Please forgive me! I am so so sorry to leave you all hanging for so long. A big project came up with my real life work. Also, I was badly stuck on this conversation between Asami and Akihito. It turned out to be very hard to write. Thank you for being patient. I will try not to make you wait so long again.

 **Chapter 11**

He must have fallen asleep—if you could call it that. Maybe more like a retreat, falling willingly into unconsciousness so he didn't have to think about anything. But he couldn't stay there. For one thing, there was the dull echo of the horrible withdrawal pains from a week ago, a persistent nagging to wake, to move, to seek. For another, the longer he lay there shut inside his own head, the more he remembered, and the worst of it played over and over. He had overdosed. Overdosed. _Him_.

His breath began to come in short, ragged bursts, burning in his swollen throat. Gentle fingers brushed across his forehead and a tender warmth caressed his cheek, calming him. Asami. He shouldn't have gotten so angry. Asami must have been worried about him. He turned his head, seeking the comfort of that hand.

"Asami," he murmured. "I'm sorry."

He heard a little gasp and the hand pulled away—just for a moment—and then returned, fingers delicate, tentative.

"It's all right," a woman's voice answered him. "You're all right now, Akihito."

Oh gods! Akihito swallowed his own breath and felt something within him grow heavy and begin to sink. For a moment, he had forgotten. He opened his eyes.

"Mom."

She looked down at him and smiled, a strangely stoic thing, as though she had made a little resolution and hung it on her face.

"I'm sorry," he said again, but meaning something quite different this time.

"There's nothing to be sorry for."

He knew then that she knew or she had guessed—if not everything, enough. A tear broke over the corner of his eye and slid into his hair. She reached out and touched him again, running her fingers along his face with a vague sadness that made him wonder if she was comforting him or herself. It wasn't unwelcome—her touch, her love—but it wasn't what he ached for.

"Come on," he said, smiling a little. "There's plenty to be sorry for."

Like lying to you…

"The only time you ever really made me angry," she said, "was when you were fourteen and cut up your grandmother's tomesode to use as a backdrop."

"That was it?" he asked. "What about the five times you had to stand up for me in juvenile court? That didn't piss you off even a little bit?"

"Not really," she said. "None of those things were done with a malicious heart. I knew you would be all right because I know your heart, Akihito."

He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath through the mask, the pure oxygen dizzying him for a moment.

"This isn't juvenile court," he said. "I'm not a kid anymore."

"I'm well aware," she said, "but your heart hasn't changed, has it?"

Had it? Not in the way she meant, not the essentials of his conscience. But a secret door had been opened on a chamber of his heart he had not known existed.

"No," he said softly.

"You know that there's nothing you can't tell me," she said.

He had no doubt she meant it, but there were some things too far outside her imagination, beyond what he knew she would think was the worst thing he could say. Even so, if he were to tell her the very worst, she would listen, would bear it, would tell him it was okay. But that would serve no real purpose other than to add more lines of sadness to her face. Some things needed to stay locked behind secret doors.

She smiled.

"Or you don't have to tell me anything at all." She slipped her hand into his and squeezed gently. "I just don't want you to be afraid."

He wasn't afraid. It was only that he didn't want to hurt her—not with lies or with the truth. He closed his eyes, took a long breath and settled on something in between.

"I didn't go to Fiji," he began.

###

Retreat was not a word or a concept Asami was ashamed of, rather a tactic to be strategically deployed. As difficult as it had been to step away from Akihito, it was a necessary maneuver in the greater war. Physically, Akihito was out of danger, which meant his parents would soon return to their own sphere, and Akihito could return to where he belonged, and they could all put this nightmare behind them. He would take Akihito home and find out what had gone so very wrong and together, they would fix it.

So he had withdrawn to the private room in the clinic, magnanimously allowing the Takabas unfettered access to their own son for a few hours. Showered, shaved and changed into fresh clothes, he felt his perspective and his control returning. He had come close to true panic the night before and it had led to the fundamental mistake of allowing Nagato to contact Akihito's parents. Now, he need only wait them out, a quiet siege of harmless attrition, and then reconstruction could begin. With an orderly plan in mind, he could even consider the food Kirishima had brought. He was stopped by a knock on the door.

"What is it?"

"Excuse me, Asami-sama." Kirishima appeared in the doorway. "Takaba Daichi-san wishes to speak with you."

Of course. No Takaba could simply go away quietly. Asami sighed.

"Tell him I'll meet him in the waiting room in fifteen minutes."

"What's wrong with here and now?"

Akihito's father had pushed his way past Kirishima and now stood in the private room, an undeniable little force, much like his son.

"Takaba-san—" Kirishima made a late move to block him. "If you'll wait for just a moment—"

"Never mind, Kirishima," Asami said. "It's all right."

Kirishima bowed and stepped out, closing the door behind him. Asami stood and turned to face Akihito's father, who was watching him with that same familiar expression, brows drawn, eyes burning with a need for answers. So. Retreat was off the table. It was to be a bold frontal assault. He should have expected no less from the man who was responsible for Akihito.

"I am at your service, Takaba-san." He gestured to the pot of coffee on the small desk. "Coffee?"

Takaba Sr. only continued to frown at him.

"You're an interesting man, Asami-san," he said.

Asami picked up the coffee pot. "You won't mind, then, if I have some."

"I don't know what your real game is," Takaba Sr. said. "In fact, I ran into a number of brick walls when I asked about you."

Asami poured himself a cup of coffee.

"Someone—an old friend—even told me to drop whatever I was investigating."

"A misunderstanding, I'm sure." Asami took a long draw on the coffee, wishing it was a cigarette. Caffeine was a weak exchange for nicotine. "I'm just a businessman."

"I'm not trying to put you on the defensive," Takaba Sr. said, "or ask you to explain yourself, not to me. I just want to make it clear that I'm not a fool."

"Nor am I." Asami set down his cup and leaned against the desk. "You're leading up to something. What is it?"

"I need your help."

That shook him, but not enough to mar his composure.

"Of course," Asami said smoothly. "I've already told you if I can assist you in any way—"

"I mean real help, not a brush off or a ride to the nearest train station."

"I assure you—"

"Forget that." Takaba Sr. cut him off. "There's one thing I need to know first, just one question I need answered."

Only a slight narrowing of Asami's eyes betrayed the tightly controlled reaction to the man's demands. He leaned against the desk with the heel of each hand braced against the edge, the muscles of his shoulders bunched, as though ready to pounce.

"Are you responsible for what happened to Akihito?"

That was a very gray area, a point that could be debated from either side. What weighed so heavily on him was not something that could be easily explained, not to this man, not right now.

"Did you supply the heroin?"

Here, at least, he could give a clear answer, the answer the man obviously wanted.

"No, I did not."

Takaba Sr. let out a long, steady breath, never taking his eyes from Asami's.

"There is one more thing—" he said, "—one thing you need to understand."

"Go on."

"It may be that we have the same goal…" Takaba Sr.'s brows lowered again. "But be clear: I am not your ally."

Asami pushed away from the desk and approached Akihito's father.

"What is it you want?"

###

It was all he could do to keep from kicking down the door to Akihito's room, all his carefully reassembled equanimity threatening to blow apart. Only the thought that Akihito would be caught in the path of the shrapnel kept him in check. As it was, he entered the room like a dark storm cloud, and it was a moment before he could speak with any measure of constraint.

"You're running away again," he said tightly.

Akihito visibly started. Asami didn't need the climbing numbers of the monitor to indicate rising stress levels. Everything played across Akihito's face.

"I don't know what you're—"

"Don't lie to me," Asami cut him off. "You asked your parents to take you in."

It wasn't anger that had coiled about his throat but something less familiar—that he wasn't sure he wanted to put a name to.

"Who told you?"

"Does it matter?" Asami asked. "You didn't think I would let you go."

Akihito swallowed, forcing himself not to look away. He had known it would come to a confrontation like this but had hoped for a little more time to work himself up to it. He pushed himself up a little higher in the bed.

"I'm not asking your permission."

"That's not what I mean," Asami said. "Whatever happened, whatever went wrong, you need to stay here and fix it."

Like it was that easy. For Asami, it probably was. He could buy, threaten, manipulate his way to whatever he wanted because he had that power, a power he had created for himself. Akihito had…what? An ambition that had been slowly eroding without him even noticing.

"I can't do that here," he said.

"Why not?" Asami asked. "How is it going to be any easier in Kanagawa?"

Gods, how could he explain? Akihito looked up at the man who stood by his bed, recognizing the tight control that couldn't quite conceal everything, recognizing the hurt that he had caused, that he could only make worse. Explain, don't explain. The result would be the same.

Akihito fisted both hands in the sheets and squeezed his eyes closed, shutting out that look on Asami's face.

"Don't make me say," he whispered. "Asami. Please."

Strong fingers grasped his jaw and lifted his head.

"Open your eyes, Akihito. Look at me."

That was a command he'd never been able to disobey. Defy, maybe, in that he would turn it around on Asami and just glare, do his best to hide the things Asami sought to draw out of him. Now tired, sick and sad, his defenses were too weak. He could neither disobey nor defy, and so he slowly opened his eyes.

Asami leaned over him, intense, inescapable.

"You don't get off that easily," Asami said, his voice too soft for the sting of his words. "If you're running away from me, you have to tell me why."

Akihito reached up, closed his fingers around Asami's wrist. He could not think clearly with the heat of that hand radiating through him. That was the problem. He pulled and was surprised when Asami yielded.

"I'm not running away from you," Akihito said. "It's me, it's all me."

Asami raised an eyebrow.

"Are you really giving me the 'It's not you, it's me' speech?"

"No. _No_!" Akihito stammered. "I'm not—it's not—" He leaned back and closed his eyes, turning his head side to side. "I'm scared, okay? That night—I couldn't think. Everything was so messed up."

There was silence for a moment and then Asami spoke.

"What happened? Why didn't you come to me?"

Akihito sighed.

"I wanted to, but it seemed like it would be another kind of failure."

"I see." A flint edge entered Asami's voice. "This is about some misguided sense of manhood."

"You can say that because you never fuck things up the way I do."

"You think I don't make mistakes?" A sharp, stark image of Akihito on the floor cut across Asami's vision.

"But you don't go running to someone else to fix them when you do."

"I don't run from my mistakes," Asami said. "And neither do you. You are strong, you fight back."

"Before, maybe." Akihito held up his left hand, where a diffuse blackening bruise marked the place where he'd clumsily injected himself. "This is what I do, now."

"No," Asami snapped. "Maybe you've forgotten who you are, but I haven't and I'm not going to let you do this."

"How are you going to stop me? Are you finally going to make good on your threat to lock me up?"

That struck an open wound Akihito hadn't been aiming for, hadn't been aware existed. Asami swooped over him, dark with anger.

"What if you had nowhere to run to? Your parents, would they take you in if I told them the truth? Or something worse? If I told them that you're a junkie and have been for some time."

"Asami!"

Akihito recoiled, pressed back against the bed, but Asami did not relent.

"Would they still want you back?"

"You wouldn't do that."

Would he? Suddenly, Akihito wasn't sure. He had always known Asami had his ruthless side. You didn't bend the world to your will without one, and once or twice, he had tasted that himself. But not now, not like this.

"You should know by now I would do anything to hold onto you."

"Even hurt me like that?"

Asami's eyes narrowed. He backed off, turned away. Akihito sat looking at the back of Asami's head, not recognizing the defeat in that rigid shoulder line.

"They already know," he said.

Asami turned around, frowning.

"I told them everything."

"Everything?"

Akihito shook his head.

"Not about—you know—what you do. Or about that—" He looked down, his voice falling to a near whisper. "—that place."

The hot, dark, suffocating rooms, the hands…Those things he couldn't give over to anyone else, a poison he would not spread.

"But you told them about us?"

Akihito shrugged. "They'd already guessed."

Asami laughed, walked a few steps away.

"You want to know who told me your plans?" he asked. "Your father. He came to me to ask for my help, to convince you to stay here in Tokyo and fight it out. Staying with your male lover being preferable to quitting. Those are some interesting genes you've inherited, Akihito."

A painful blush burned into Akihito's cheeks. His parents had surprised him, the way they'd reacted. Maybe next to their fear and worry over everything else that was going on with him, the revelation that he was gay took a back seat. Still, he knew it hadn't been an easy thing for them to hear.

Asami came back to him and took his face in both of his hands, holding him so that he could not look away.

"Tell me what you want," he said.

Akihito had heard other people describe Asami's eyes as golden but to him, they were more like amber. Gold only reflected light. Amber gathered it into a warm pool of color. Maybe other people only saw those eyes when they were cold or hard in business dealings, but when turned towards Akihito, they melted. It should have been his clue, that difference; it should have told him what the man himself had never said. As it was, he only thought that they saw too much, bored right through his skull so that there was no part of him that wasn't laid open to Asami's scrutiny.

"Let me go," he whispered.

Asami sighed and stiffened himself for one last attempt.

"You need to know that the man who abducted you is still alive. He's still out there." He felt the muscles in Akihito's face jump, the aftershock that trembled through him. "If you leave, I can't protect you."

Akihito felt the blood run out of his face and the now-sickeningly familiar feeling of tightness across his chest. The monitor beside the bed began to beep a warning. He willed himself to draw a breath on every bleat of the monitor, forcing away the memory of the hand that came over his nose and mouth and dragged him into darkness. Breathe. Just breathe.

"Why?" he pushed the word out on one of those desperate breaths. "Why did he take me?"

"I don't know," Asami said. "We're trying to find him. Until we do—"

"And when you find him, you'll kill him."

It wasn't a question, and Asami didn't answer it.

"Because of me." Akihito closed his eyes, shook his head within Asami's hands, leaning into his palm for just a moment. "Don't, Asami."

"You want me to let him go, too? Let him get away with what he did and come after you again?"

"That's just it, isn't it? It was because I'm with you, right? If I stay, you still can't protect me."

Asami wanted to say that it wasn't true, wanted to mean it, but the truth was that a serious lover was a liability, that getting close to one person was too much of a risk to him and to them. As long as Akihito was with him, he was marked and could be used as a weapon. It had already happened before and now here it was again. Had they reached the point where the damage from the fallout was too severe? Was he selfish enough to ignore the fact that it was Akihito who bore the greater burden of that risk?

Akihito's face was warm and soft and alive in his hands, but he remembered it cold and blue on the floor of the condo, pale and thin and spattered with blood—Akihito's own blood—on Fei Long's ship.

"Don't, Asami."

Asami saw something that had been niggling at him all day, something he had tried to put down to sedatives or oxygen or something other than the truth. There was a look in Akihito's eyes like a guttering candle, as though all that wild energy and bluster had been swamped at last. And the fault of it he knew lay ultimately with him. He let his hands fall, let go of Akihito and stood.

"For you, then."

He turned and left the room.

When the door closed behind him, Akihito doubled over, pulled his knees to his chest and rocked with a hollow sense of loss.

###

Even years of exposure to Asami's often mercurial decisions couldn't prepare Kirishima for the curt order to bring the car around. He would have bet a sizeable amount on his conviction that nothing short of a major disaster could have pulled the boss away from Takaba's side at that moment. He was well-schooled enough to make no comment and only wait for instructions, sitting next to Asami in the back of the limo, watching from the corner of his eye as Asami lit a cigarette with a steady hand, giving away nothing.

That is, until they pulled up to the Grand Hills building and Kirishima received another shock when Asami made no move to get out when Suoh opened the door of the limo.

"Not here," he said. "The Roppongi Hills apartment."

Suoh obediently closed the door, got back in the limo and pulled into traffic while Kirishima made a mental check list of what would be needed to make an apartment that hadn't been used in over a year habitable, calculating when it would be advisable to ask how long Asami intended to stay there.

Next to him, Asami lit another cigarette off the butt of the first. He burned through five before he spoke again. Kirishima couldn't help but keep count.

"Pull back the investigation on Sagawa Kenji," Asami said. "If Sagawa thinks we've given up, he may back off of Takaba."

"Yes, sir."

The jolts were coming thick and fast tonight, Kirishima thought. The car pulled up in front of another luxury high-rise, and Kirishima got out, coming around to the right side of the car, intending to follow Asami inside.

"No, don't come with me," Asami said without looking at him. "Take the car back to the clinic. Make it available to Takaba, if he wants it."

Kirishima had to ask because at this point, his powers to predict were shot.

"And bring him here?"

Asami let out something that could have been a laugh. It was hard to tell.

"I doubt it," he said and headed into the building.

Kirishima turned to Suoh, who gave him a level, meaningful gaze. He nodded and Suoh tossed the car keys at him and followed Asami into the building. At least Asami accepted Suoh's silent, stolid presence and didn't order him back to the car, Kirishima was relieved to note. This affair had never promised to end well, if an ending is what this was. He climbed into the driver's seat and turned the limo back towards Shinjuku and whatever fresh trouble awaited him there.

.

* * *

This started as a torture-Akihito story but it seems to have morphed into a torture-Asami story and so by extension, a torture-the-reader story. I'm really sorry, unless you are a masochist. In that case, you're welcome.


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: Thank you so much for the thoughtful reviews and for reading along! You probably already know this but just in case, "miai" stands for arranged marriage. Men and women interested in arranged marriages have portfolios of portraits taken to show to prospective mates.

 **Chapter 12**

He had asked to come home in the desperate belief that if he could go back to where he had started, he could pick up the threads of himself that had been swept from his fingers, but he felt as though he was trying to fit into a dolls house or a skin that he had shed. It didn't feel like home and he began to wonder if he had made a mistake, but in the extreme of the moment, he had turned instinctively to the safest haven, far removed from that other world.

The sun had worked round to the window, and he turned away from it, stretching his arms across the empty bed. He was in his old room, which had been fitted up as a guest room after he had moved out and bore no mementos of his childhood. His parents were not sentimental that way. While it added to the out-of-place feeling, it was okay. He did not belong in this room. He wasn't a kid anymore and he didn't intend to stay. He just needed some time…

With a grumpy sigh, he rolled onto his stomach and pulled a pillow under his chest. On the stand by the bed were two cards Dr. Nagato had given him when he had left the clinic. One was to the Kanagawa Drug Rehab Center. Attendance there had been a condition of his return home. He'd already been to one session and come back feeling like all of his skin had been methodically stripped off and wasn't looking forward to another round.

The other card was for a therapist who specialized in rape trauma. Akihito picked it up and turned it in his fingers. Seeing a therapist had not been part of the agreement because he had not told his parents that part of the story and never would. When he tried—and he had tried—he could not imagine a therapist with a frame of reference broad enough for the story he would have to tell, and so he had not made an appointment.

He reached for the lamp on the table, tipped it back and slid the card underneath, where it joined a third card. This one was not from Dr. Nagato. It had been handed to him when Kirishima had brought Akihito and his parents back to Kanagawa from the clinic.

"If you need anything," Kirishima had said, "do not hesitate to contact me."

This one said Kirishima Kei, Executive Assistant, Sion Corp. and a phone number. Under the printed number, Kirishima had written in another number in pen. Neither was the private number Akihito knew by heart. He lowered the lamp over the two cards, climbed out of bed and headed for the shower.

The other condition was that he get a job as soon as he was well enough, and today was his first day. It wasn't much of a job—just doing miai photos for a small portrait studio in Motomachi—but he had gotten it on his own, without his dad or anyone else pulling strings or calling in favors.

Back in the bedroom, he dug some clothes out of one of the boxes that had arrived last week, all of his stuff from the condo, neatly packed and labeled, the orderly hand of Kirishima evident. Akihito hadn't unpacked because it seemed too permanent a thing and he wasn't sure yet just where he was going to land. And so he left everything in the boxes, only pulling things out as needed. Even his cameras remained boxed up. The studio supplied their own.

Out in the kitchen, his mother was busy at the counter, her back to him. He peered over her shoulder to see what she was doing, and she jumped.

"Don't sneak up on me like that!" she said. "We'll end up with sliced finger in with the shogayaki."

"Is that what you're making?"

"Mmhmm. Just slicing the pork ahead of time."

"Will you show me how to make it tonight?" He loved the way his mother made shogayaki, a little sweet to go with the ginger, something he would never make for…

He deliberately shifted his focus and absently fiddled with the knives on the cutting board, not allowing himself to complete the thought. His mother glanced at him shrewdly, used now to him drifting away mentally, even if she didn't always understand why.

"Dad already gone?"

"Mmhmm."

Akihito felt a little of the tension drain out of him. His father had not been happy about him coming home, had not been happy he had taken this crappy job, and his disapproval was a constant reminder of Akihito's failure. But now he was in Thailand for two weeks on assignment for a magazine, and Akihito felt he had been granted a small reprieve.

"He isn't really angry with you, Akihito," his mother said. "He only wants what all parents want, for their children to be happy and successful."

"I know."

That was part of the problem, that he couldn't blame his father for being angry. Because he couldn't be completely honest, it was impossible to explain what had really happened and why he needed time, needed to step back. From his father's point of view, it probably looked like plain weakness. His own point of view was so warped and distorted, he couldn't put a name to what he was feeling.

"Eat something before you go," his mother said. "There's miso on the table."

He got himself a bowl and leaned against the counter and talked cooking with her while he ate. Everything she wanted to ask and he didn't want to think about swept away by talk of fresh panko and the correct way to grate ginger. When he was done, he put his bowl in the sink, kissed her and left for work, fully aware that he was still on the run.

###

It was bound to happen. For three weeks, the tension had been building steadily and without some kind of relief valve, something was going to blow. From the looks of the little receptionist Minami, the explosion had occurred while he was offsite at a meeting. The usually unflappably cheerful Minami typed distractedly at her computer, face blotchy, eyes swollen and red, the occasional hysterical sniffle escaping her. With a resigned sigh, Kirishima swept past her into the boss's office, not sure what he would find there.

Asami stood at the window smoking, his back to the door. The only physical indication of anything out of the ordinary was the intercom phone, which lay smashed on the floor, one red light blinking feebly. It was the only smashable item in the cleanly furnished office and couldn't have been particularly satisfying. Without comment, Kirishima disconnected the unit from its wires and tucked the broken pieces under his arm.

"Today's reports," he said, placing a stack of folders in the middle of the empty desk, wondering if he should hold back the one on top.

"Is Minami's resignation among them?"

The deep baritone that rumbled across the office was unreadable, even for Kirishima, who had learned to read his boss's moods out of self-preservation. In these last weeks, however, that particular power seemed to have been scuttled and Kirishima was left to scramble, guess and repair.

"No, sir," Kirishima said cautiously, wondering if that was, in fact, what Minami was typing up in the outside office. "But I will request it immediately."

Asami turned sharply away from the window.

"You'll do no such thing," he snapped. "Tell her to take the rest of the day off." He took a long pull on his cigarette, drawing it down to the filter and stubbed it out in the ashtray in his hand. "And send her something," he said on the exhale of smoke.

"Er…send her what, sir?" Kirishima was at an absolute loss. It was like that stark night when everything changed. He—they had all been wildly off-balance ever since.

"I don't know," Asami said. "Earrings. A puppy. Whatever will make her happy."

A puppy?

"Yes, sir."

When Kirishima had gone, Asami crossed to the desk and stood, looking down at the stack of reports. On top was the file for the Onishi Group, the private security firm he'd contracted three weeks ago. Onishi sent daily reports to Kirishima, and Kirishima forwarded anything noteworthy on to him. If nothing out of the ordinary occurred, Kirishima compiled the dailies into a weekly report. Asami flipped open the folder and glanced at the latest report, a straightforward record of Akihito's movements over the past week. A very short record. In that week, Akihito had left his parents' house only three times: twice to the Happy Sunshine Portrait Studio and once to the Kanagawa Drug Rehab Center.

Asami slapped the folder closed and lit another cigarette, ignoring the fist that tightened inside his chest. But he could not ignore those last three words and the uncomfortable, unaccustomed feeling they called up. Those words should never have been associated with Takaba Akihito and yet there they were.

 _You are mine. I am the only one who can stop your breathing, the only one who can change you…_

Not like this. He hadn't meant like this and yet…His fingers tightened around his cigarette until it crumbled, burning ash tumbling down the front of his vest.

At least there had been no further sightings of Sagawa anywhere near Akihito. If there was little else to latch onto, there was that.

###

It was a bluff, it had to be. You didn't spend seven weeks hunting all over southeast Asia for someone just to dump them two weeks later. True, if Asami had wanted to protect the kid, he could have easily stashed him somewhere, but there was such a thing as hiding in plain sight, putting on a show to throw off anyone who might be watching. Sagawa admitted it looked convincing. Asami had even moved to a different apartment, spent longer hours in his office, seemed to restrict his activity to those exclusive environs. And the kid had moved back in with his parents. Sagawa had found him easily enough but he wasn't guarded this time by Asami's men. No, the car staked out across the street was obviously a private security firm. If they noticed Sagawa—if they had orders to watch for him—it didn't cause the ripples it would have a few weeks ago. And as far as he could find out, the search for Kenji had been withdrawn. Asami had pulled back—or so it seemed.

The problem was he couldn't verify it. Slammed doors, calls sent to voice mail, furious shouts of "Don't contact me again!" Sagawa had become a pariah. It wasn't honor among thieves; it was a matter of survival. The gruesome death of Fujimori's dealer had sent an all too clear message. Sagawa was screwing with the wrong man and anyone who aided him would meet the same fate.

"You gotta let this go," Mukai—one of the few remaining who would even speak to him—told him. "You're a marked man already. You know there's plenty of people who'd do just about anything to get on Asami Ryuichi's good side. They'd feed you to him in a second if they could. Hell, I'm tempted myself."

"Thanks a lot," Sagawa said. "But look, you know people who know him. I need to know if it's true, if he's really done with that kid he was living with."

"Why? You looking to take his place?"

Sagawa didn't even bother to answer that.

"You think someone's going to ask him?" Mukai almost snorted cheap bourbon out of his nose. "Have you ever met Asami?"

"Yes." He had, actually, two years ago, after Kenji had disappeared, to ask for help in finding him, only to be brushed off as though the man didn't even know who he was talking about. Sagawa would never forget the look of dismissive arrogance on that face.

"Then you know he's a cold, scary bastard."

He knew about the cold bastard part.

"All I know is there's gossip." Mukai shrugged. "If it's true or not, how can you tell?"

"What gossip?"

"That Asami Ryuichi dumped his pretty boy-toy because he got hooked on heroin."

What if it was true, then? Asami took what he wanted and threw it away when he was done. Sagawa felt the first tiny twinge of pity for the kid, but it was quickly swamped by a surge of superiority. Asami hadn't changed. He didn't like messes. That's why he'd abandoned Kenji. Sagawa was better than that. He was willing to put his own life on the line.

"You think it's true?"

"What do I look like," Mukai asked, "his relationship counselor? What the hell, anyway? You put a target on your back for what? For Kenji? He's really worth getting killed for?"

Sagawa's hands tightened around his glass. No one understood, no one knew what he was really like.

Mukai slapped a couple of bills on the bar and stood.

"I'll say it again. Let it go. You won't win against Asami. He _will_ kill you. Get out of Tokyo. Hell, get out of Japan, if you can."

But Sagawa couldn't give up. He had gambled everything, and now the players were leaving the table. The only thing he had left to bet was his own life.

###

If he was honest with himself, Akihito would admit that the miai photos were depressing him. The majority of his clients were men in their thirties, salarymen who were too busy or too socially backward for modern dating, and so they were either too rushed, too tired or too awkward to relax for a portrait sitting. He did his best to chat with them and draw them out, but the busy ones cut him off and asked him to just get on with it while the awkward ones often withdrew even further. It was frustrating and exhausting.

Sometimes he would try a change of scenery—there was a trend for casual photos in parks—but even that didn't work with the worst of them. So he actually welcomed the request of a new client to do the photos in his apartment. In familiar surroundings, maybe he could get photos where the guy looked comfortable—or at least not like he was in pain.

The apartment was in Saitobuncho, a second floor end unit with an outside entrance. Akihito slung his bags onto his back and knocked on the door. The man who answered was a surprise.

"Sumida-san?"

The man stared for a moment and nodded.

"You're the photographer?"

"Yeah, Takaba Akihito. Nice to meet you."

Akihito peered past the man into the room behind him. It didn't look like much as far as backdrops went but if the guy was happy here, that's all that mattered.

"Um, come in."

Sumida stepped back and motioned Akihito into the apartment. Akihito bowed and stepped past him. The surprise had been that the man was actually handsome. He didn't have that anonymous copy-machine quality that many of his clients had. But there was something about him, something that veiled his eyes and haunted the line of his mouth. Sad, Akihito thought. The man was sad. Maybe he'd lost someone he cared about. The nearly bare apartment spoke volumes, too. This was a man who didn't really care about his surroundings, for whatever reason. It was going to be tough, drawing him out without unintentionally triggering something.

Akihito set his bags on the floor and straightened.

"So, uh, before we start," he said, "I like to get to know a little about you, you know, the sort of thing you want people to see when they look at your photo. So maybe we can talk a little bit about you."

His back to Akihito, the man methodically locked the door and shot home two security bolts. It wasn't the best of neighborhoods, but two bolts was a little extreme, Akihito thought. The man turned around and smiled.

"We're just waiting for one other person," he said.

"Oh." Another surprise. "You—you want someone else in the pictures, too?" Akihito shrugged. This was a first. He'd done dogs, cats and cars and even dolls but another person was new.

"Do you have a cellphone?" Sumida asked.

"Yeah," Akihito admitted hesitantly. It was the first thing he'd bought with his first paycheck. It was hard to operate without one. But this conversation was starting to drift in an odd direction. "Do you need to borrow it?"

He dug the phone out of his pocket and held it out, but Sumida shook his head.

"You're going to have to make the call," he said. "I don't know the number."

"What number?" Akihito frowned. Okay, this guy was a nut. Probably best to humor him and get out of here as fast as he could. "Are we calling a friend of yours?"

"No, a friend of yours."

Akihito's dormant sense of self-preservation woke with a sluggish little shudder. What had he walked into?

"Who?" he asked breathlessly, almost certain he knew the answer.

"You really don't recognize me?" the man asked. "I thought he would have made sure you knew who I was. I tested you a couple of times, passing you in the street, but you never gave a sign you knew it was me."

No, he didn't remember. Mostly, he hadn't let himself remember and when memories came that he couldn't stop, all he saw was a hand that clamped over his nose and mouth.

"You're the one…"

Akihito exploded, hurtling towards the door, hands reaching desperately for the bolts, but the man who called himself Sumida grabbed both his arms and tried to pin them behind his back. Akihito twisted furiously, managed to free one arm and brought the heel of his hand up under Sumida's jaw with as much force as he could. Sumida stumbled backward, clutching his face. Akihito struck out with his right leg, kicking the man in the stomach and sending him doubled over to the floor. A wild lunge and Akihito had his hands on the bolts, shoving them back, but the lock was a deadbolt and needed a key. Behind him, Sumida had rolled onto his knees and would be on his feet in seconds. The only other option was the window. Akihito raised his leg to kick the glass out but was grabbed from behind and pulled down, his head banging solidly on the bare floor, shattering his vision into black sparks.

"I don't want to hurt you," the man gasped.

"Are you fucking _serious_?!" Akihito screamed.

He thrashed savagely, but the man straddled his chest, pinning his arms to the floor with his knees. From the back of his jeans, the man pulled an automatic pistol. Holding it in both hands, he pressed the business end to the middle of Akihito's forehead. Akihito froze, his heart flinging itself against his ribcage.

 _Shit. Oh no. No._

"I don't want to hurt you," the man repeated, "but I will. You see, I have nothing left to lose, so there's absolutely no reason for me not to kill you if you don't do what I say. If you do and I get what I want, I promise you will walk out of here alive."

"You _sold_ me."

Somehow, that's all he could think, that here was the man who had thrust him into that long, black nightmare.

"Yes," the man said blankly.

Akihito opened his mouth to shout "Why?" but he suddenly had no air. Mouth gaping, he writhed wildly, frantic for breath but could pull nothing in, as though everything around him had solidified.

 _Gods, no! Not this! Not now!_

His chest heaved painfully under the weight of the man. No! He wouldn't let it drag him under, not this time. Not here in front of this man. Pulling together every last bit of himself, he twisted hard to the right, dislodging the man enough so that he could free his arms and curl in on himself, easing the tightness in his chest so that he could at least breathe.

"Hey, I mean it!" the man said. "Don't try anything."

The barrel of the gun came down sharply against his temple, making him wince.

"I won't," Akihito wheezed. "Just-just get off me."

He felt the man's weight lift away. Peering up, Akihito saw the man standing at his feet, saw his chance and with his ankles crossed, caught the other man around the leg and tried to topple him, but Sumida's stance was too strong and he was obviously no stranger to street fighting. He stomped down hard on Akihito's calf.

"Aaaugh!"

"Dammit!" the man yelled. "Don't make me hurt you, you little shit!"

Akihito scrambled onto his hands and knees.

"Fuck you!" he screamed. "You already hurt me! And you're holding a fucking gun on me and telling me you have no reason not to kill me so _fuck you_!"

Sumida stared at him for a minute and then laughed. Not a nasty laugh but a surprising, nervous sound.

"If you think you're going to alert the neighbors by screaming," he said, "this place is vacant. It's going to be torn down in a couple of weeks."

"What?" Akihito wondered just how hard he'd hit his head. He was having a tough time following this guy's line of thought.

"Come on," Sumida said, holding out a hand. "Get up. Let's try this again."

Akihito slapped his hand away, and Sumida stepped back, gun still pointed at Akihito's head. Eyes on the gun, Akihito slowly got to his feet.

"I'd be lying if I said I was sorry for what happened to you," Sumida said. "Not because I wanted to hurt you—not really. I didn't have a choice."

"Bastard," Akihito said.

"Yeah, I know. It's a long story. Look, you make that call we were talking about and maybe I'll tell you while we wait."

That call—he knew what it was for, to lure Asami there. So this man could kill him? Was this man crazy enough to think he could pull that off?

"I'm not making any call, so just go ahead and shoot me."

"It's doesn't really matter," Sumida said. "You know there's a private security firm tailing you, right? Or didn't you notice that, either? I disabled the agent's car this morning while he was off taking a piss so he couldn't follow you here, but you can bet he alerted Asami right away." There it was, the name at last. "It might take some time, but eventually, he'll figure out where you are. It's just this would all be over much faster if you call him yourself."

Akihito struggled to think it through. Yeah, he'd noticed the car outside his parents' house and pretty much guessed who it was and why. Would it be better to just let it play out, let Asami figure it out? Would it be better if it was after dark? Or worse? Either way, it amounted to the same thing. He was in trouble again and Asami was being made to run to the rescue. Rescue someone who had dumped him. Gods, would he even come?

"Come on," Sumida said. "Don't just stand there scowling. Pick up the phone."

"We broke up," Akihito said flatly. This man obviously knew enough that there was no point denying the relationship. "He won't come."

"Three words." Sumida held up three fingers. "Private security firm. He still cares, that's three more." He kicked the phone across the floor. "Pick it up."

 _Fuck_.

Akihito picked up the phone and stood staring at it, unable to think of any other excuses, unable to face hours of uncertain waiting at gunpoint. He drew a long breath and punched in the number he knew by heart, listened while it rang once…twice…waiting—his heart turned inside out—for that familiar black velvet voice.

The third ring cut off and the voice came, strained, impatient, angry.

" _Who is this?_ "

Akihito closed his eyes and swayed with the force of it.

" _Sagawa?_ _Where is he, you son-of-a-bitch?_ "

"It-it's me, Asami."


	13. Chapter 13

A/N: Sorry to be a bit late but what I thought would be one chapter turned into two and I didn't want to leave this on another cliffhanger. And I had to write through chapter 14 to make sure both chapters worked together. So I'm going to give you both chapters at once. Thank you again to everyone who has been reading along and leaving such thoughtful comments!

 **Chapter 13**

The sound of that voice sluiced through Asami, an unexpected deluge flooding a still-open wound, burning like sea water.

"Akihito, are you all right? Where are you?"

A short silence, broken by a shuddering breath and then Akihito's voice again, in a tumbling rush.

" _Don't come here, Asami_! _He has a gun_! _He's going to kill you_!"

There was the sound of a scuffle, as though the phone was being jostled and another voice, a little muffled and almost indistinct.

" _You are impossible_. _You don't give up, do you_?"

"Akihito?!" Asami shouted into the phone.

" _Yes, he's here_." That other voice, clear now, in possession of the phone. " _And he's all right—for now. He's also very disobedient. What he was supposed to say was that we're waiting for you to come join us_."

Asami gripped the phone until he could feel it cutting into his palm.

"You want to see me, Sagawa," he said, "you do it like a man. You don't hide behind a shield. Let Takaba go and I'll meet you anywhere you like."

" _This isn't a dick measuring contest_ ," Sagawa said, " _so let's leave outdated standards of manhood out of it_. _Here's how it's going to work. I'm going to text you the address and you're going to get into a cab and come here alone. Alone, okay? I cut off one of this guy's fingers for every mook you bring along. For every car that tails you, I cut off an ear_."

"If you touch him, I will flay every inch of skin from your body," Asami snarled.

" _You'll have to come here to do that_ ," Sagawa said calmly.

" _Asami, don_ —"

Akihito's voice was cut off abruptly, followed by the sound of another struggle. Asami listened, blood surging against his eardrums in the impotent drive to act, to reach through the phone and stop whatever was happening beyond his reach.

" _Hang up and I'll send you the address_ ," Sagawa returned, a little breathless. " _With the traffic at this time of day, I'll give you an hour and fifteen minutes to get here_."

And the line went dead. Within seconds, the text message appeared. Asami glanced at it, tapped his phone a few times and dropped it into his pocket.

"Get me a cab."

"Asami-sama," Kirishima started in an obvious attempt at reasoning with his boss but stopped at the look on Asami's face, a look he knew too well. "Yes, sir."

"I've forwarded the address to Suoh and Inaba." Asami stripped off his jacket, opened a blind panel in the office wall, took out a double shoulder holster and strapped it on. "Have them follow and take up positions two blocks on either side of the location. Sagawa is operating alone. He won't be able to spot them at that distance."

He checked the clips on both guns and slipped his jacket back on, the cold intensity that came with clear purpose taking over. These last three weeks, watching Akihito from a distance, allowing him time and space to sort out what had happened while also trying to keep him safe had been maddening for a man like Asami. The call that morning from the Onishi agent had been an ax waiting to fall, shattering the tension but releasing pent up fear and months of fury. It would end _today_. He would make sure of it. And after that, he would reclaim what was his.

From a metal box inside the hidden cupboard, Asami retrieved a small bug on a wire and clipped it under his collar.

"You stay here," he said to Kirishima. "Keep in communication with Suoh and Inaba. They are not to move except on my signal. Are we clear?"

Kirishima noted the dangerous light behind Asami's eyes, not of anger or resolve but of something like anticipation. _He thinks he'll get him back_. _That all he has to do is reach for what he wants_. Really, there was no wholly positive outcome to this situation as far as Kirishima could see. They were on a collision course, and the casualty count was unknown. He sighed.

"Yes, sir."

Akihito crouched on the floor, cradling his head and gasping for air. Sagawa had hit him hard enough to knock him down, but that wasn't what had turned his joints to water so that he couldn't stand if he wanted to. More effectively than a blow from the butt of his gun, Sagawa's words had sent Akihito sprawling, spiraling over that black abyss where he had lost himself before, where he was just a thing to be used and cut to pieces and discarded.

 _You are nothing, you hear me? Nothing! You're just a hole. You're more trouble than you're worth. More than you're worth…_

"Hey, come on. I didn't hit you that hard."

Sagawa reached for him, but Akihito lashed out frantically and scrambled backward until he came up hard against the wall, the solid thud driving home how trapped he was, again. He braced his feet on the floor, bent his head between his knees and sat heaving, unsure what he was pulling in or what might come back out.

"Come on," Sagawa said again. "Don't pass out. I was just trying to help you up."

Head down, Akihito thrust out both hands blindly.

"Don't touch me," he said, cringing at the fractured sound of his voice. "Just—I'll get up myself. Just give me a minute."

"Okay."

He hated this, _hated it_ , hated himself for not being able to control it, how quickly, how easily he could be taken down by a few words. He wrapped his arms around his chest and rubbed his hands up and down, up and down, trying to brush away the reflex to go back to his knees and beg. But there was no one to beg, nothing to beg for. Held here at gunpoint was actually a pretty effective form of rehab. A bubble of wild hysteria rose in him and came out as a hopeless snort.

 _Instead of ignoring the craving_ , the rehab director had said, _recognize it for what it is and you immediately establish power over it_.

But if the craving was escape and what you needed to escape was your own head, that little bit of advice didn't help much. And with a gun pointed at your head, any other kind of escape wasn't happening, either. Akihito moaned into his knees.

"Don't tell me you're going to get sick on me." There was the sound of plastic bags and rummaging and a soft thunk of something set on the floor in front of him. "Here. It's still sealed. I promise I didn't put anything in it."

Akihito raised his head, saw a bottle of mineral water at his feet. He looked up at Sagawa, who was leaning against the counter of the kitchenette, watching him with something that might almost have been concern, if that wouldn't have been hilariously laughable.

"I'd give you a drink out of the tap but the water's turned off."

What did it matter, Akihito thought. If the guy wanted him dead, he could just shoot him. He picked up the bottle, screwed off the top, tipped his head back and drank. It was room temperature but it tasted like water. He closed his eyes and waited but felt nothing out of the ordinary—other than being scared shitless. He opened his eyes and saw Sagawa still watching him.

"What is it?" the man asked. "The heroin? You need a hit?"

So he knew all about that. Of course he did. He orchestrated it.

"Are you for real? You kidnap me and hold a gun on me and tell me you don't want to hurt me. You sell me off where I get hooked and then you're all concerned that I need a hit." Akihito laughed and shook his head.

"Yeah, I know." Sagawa shrugged. "Look, you seem like a nice enough guy. How'd someone like you get mixed up with Asami anyway?"

"You seriously want me to tell you how I met my ex? Now—in the middle of—of— _this_?"

"I thought it might take your mind off things."

 _Call a friend, someone you can talk to openly and honestly about your craving_. Gods, he was going to lose it. He was going to go into hysterics and not be able to stop. This was ridiculous.

"Forget it," he said. "You talk. You promised me a story, didn't you? Why do you want to kill Asami?"

"You've got it wrong," Sagawa said. "I don't want to kill him. I want his help."

Akihito coughed through a mouthful of water.

"This is how you ask for help? Didn't your parents teach you how to say please?"

"I tried the conventional method. He didn't even bother to laugh in my face."

A note had crept into Sagawa's voice that tugged, like a little hook or a thorn catching your clothes.

"What do you need?" Akihito asked. "Money or something?"

"No. I need my brother."

Shit. That was a very big thorn. Akihito leaned forward.

"What happened to him?" Did he want to know? Had Asami killed him?

"I don't know." Sagawa shrugged again. "That's the problem. He disappeared two years ago. I've been trying to find him ever since."

The next logical question was another one he wasn't sure he wanted answered.

"What does Asami have to do with it?"

"Nothing, probably."

Akihito laughed full out this time.

"You know, this is a terrible story so far," he said.

"Yeah. It doesn't get a whole lot better, just so you know. And spoiler alert: at least one of us isn't coming out of this alive and I'm pretty sure it's going to be me."

"Don't hate me if I don't feel sorry for you."

"I get that," Sagawa said.

They were silent for a moment, and Akihito picked at the label on the water bottle.

"Were they lovers?" he asked at last. "Your brother and Asami?"

"I guess, something like that."

Sagawa sketched out what he knew of his brother's relationship with Asami and how it ended.

"Kenji knew it was a huge risk, stealing information from Asami, but he did it for me."

"It was still a betrayal," Akihito said, almost to himself. "Asami hates betrayal."

"Maybe. It wasn't like he killed someone, you know? Anyway…" Sagawa took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and put one in his mouth. "You don't mind, do you?"

Akihito shook his head.

"Want one?"

"No thanks."

"Anyway, that was it." Sagawa lit his cigarette and blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. "Asami doesn't play. Once you piss him off, that's it."

"Did he retaliate?"

"No. I mean, other than dumping Kenji, no."

"What happened to your brother, though?" Akihito asked. "You must have some idea."

"Not really," Sagawa said. "Obviously, we're not angels. He was always mixed up in stuff, and there was money trouble. There was always money trouble. He owed money or he pissed someone off and they did something. I don't know who and I don't know what."

"So why does this have anything to do with Asami? Why come after me unless you just wanted revenge?"

"Because I tried everything else. The police, everyone we knew who had the least bit of pull or contacts. They all said the same thing. It was impossible. Asami said that, too. It was impossible to find Kenji." Sagawa leaned back again and crossed his ankles. "But what they really meant was that nobody cared enough to try. So I thought I'd prove that you could find someone if you cared enough about them."

A shiver ricocheted sharply down Akihito's spine.

"That's why you took me."

Sagawa took another drag.

"And he found you." There was no smugness, no vindication in his voice. But neither was there any regret.

"So he's coming here now," Akihito said, "and you're going to point this out to him and you think he's going to change his mind and help you instead of—oh—I don't know—blowing your brains out?"

"That wasn't my original plan, no." Sagawa half turned and stubbed his cigarette out in the sink. "I knew once he got you back and picked up the clues I left, if he couldn't catch me, he'd figure Kenji was involved too and he'd go looking for Kenji, and I was right. He put a search out on him, but he pulled it back when you nearly killed yourself."

Akihito's head jerked up again. How much did this man know? How closely had he been watching them this entire time?

"And that's why we're here now," Sagawa went on. "I could have stashed you away somewhere but then Asami would waste more time looking for you. This way, he knows where you are and who you're with and what the stakes are right up front. I didn't want to do it this way but I'm out of options. And yeah, I know it means Asami will kill me. I told you that in the spoilers, remember?"

Sagawa laughed again, another quiet, nervous little laugh. Akihito stared at him as he lit another cigarette, his hands shaking slightly. The man was _scared_. He could blithely talk about being killed all he wanted but he was frightened.

"So why don't you hire your own detective?"

"I did." Sagawa spit a stray bit of tobacco off his tongue. "It was no good. You know the kind of people we're talking about, right? They don't talk to detectives, not even the swanky kind Asami hired. But Asami himself…if Asami goes to them directly, they'll bend over like drinking straws for him. That's how he found you."

"He won't do it," Akihito said. "You can't force Asami out like that."

"I already have," Sagawa said. "Twice."

Because of me, Akihito thought. It was true.

"What's the point, then?" Akihito asked. "Even if Asami does what you want, he's still going to kill you. It's basically suicide."

"Uh huh." Sagawa blew smoke. "You have any brothers or sisters?"

"No."

"But your parents love you, right? They let you move back home." Sagawa nodded. "You're lucky. I never had anyone love me like that except Kenji. See, it's already killing me, not knowing where he is or what happened to him. If Asami finds him and then kills me, that's okay. At least I'll die knowing."

So that's what this had all been about, one of Asami's old lovers, another stray he had picked up and then discarded and put from his mind. Had Asami loved Kenji? Had he whispered crazy things in his ear while he made love to him? Had he manipulated Kenji into living with him? Had he taken over his life, turning it upside down and making him love it and beg for more?

Ugh, no! Akihito pushed thoughts, memories, comparisons away. The man in front of him was not insane, he now realized. Crazy, yeah, but not the madman he had been expecting. But this situation was hurtling towards a kind of madness he couldn't bear to witness, and he had to do something to stop it. First things first, he had to snap out of this sentimental self-pity and take stock. He pushed himself to his feet and stood uncertainly.

"Uh, I have to take a leak," he said.

"Bathroom's over there," Sagawa waved his pistol over his shoulder. "You'll have to piss down the shower drain. Toilet won't flush with the water off."

Akihito started across the room, but Sagawa stopped him.

"Just so you know," he said, "there's no window in there. Only glass block, in case you were thinking about jumping out or anything."

"No, I just need to pee," Aki said.

"It wasn't a random choice, this place." Sagawa waved the gun around some more. "See, there's only one entrance and one window, both in the front. And you can't get to the window from outside. Only the door. And it's just this one big room—except for the bathroom."

"And it's deserted, I get it," Akihito said. "Can I go pee now?"

"Knock yourself out. Just leave the door open."

As he crossed the room, Akihito took a quick glance around, taking in what he hadn't noticed before. The only furniture in the place was a futon and a folding disc chair. Boxes and bags of water, tea, and cup noodles were lined up along the wall, along with a small camp stove and a couple of lantern flashlights. And at Sagawa's feet, a large black duffle. It seemed Sagawa was planning for them to camp out here. The menu was going to get monotonous. Akihito thought of his mother, making shogayaki that night with a little stab in his heart. What would she do when he didn't come home? Would she freak thinking something had happened to him or would she think he'd relapsed and was too ashamed or too wasted to face her? Neither option was a pretty one. He wanted to call her, spin her another pleasant lie, but Sagawa had his phone.

He couldn't let it get that far, not to where that was even necessary. What could he do? He went into the bathroom and relieved himself. His only hope was to get that gun away from Sagawa before Asami got there. He took a quick look around, but the bathroom was as stripped bare as the rest of the apartment. There was nothing he could use as a weapon. Sagawa had almost been kind in a warped, offhand sort of way. Maybe that was a kind of weapon.

But when he came out of the bathroom, Sagawa was waiting with a set of handcuffs dangling from a finger.

"Sorry about this," he said, "but it's kind of a requirement."

 _Shit_.

"I'm not going to fight you anymore, okay?" Akihito said. "You have the gun. Isn't that enough?"

"Not once Asami gets here." The casual note of kindness was gone. Sagawa was dead serious. "Come over here and sit against the wall, hands behind your back."

Sagawa motioned to the wall by the kitchenette, where a narrow pipe emerged from the floor and ran up along the wall into the ceiling, obviously intending to handcuff Akihito to the pipe. This was not good. Once chained up, he'd be helpless.

"I will shoot you in the leg if you don't move now. It makes no difference to me."

At that, Sagawa fired a shot into the floor by Akihito's feet. Akihito leapt catlike sideways.

"What the fuck, you crazy bastard!"

Shot in the leg, he'd be even more helpless. Heart hammering against his ribs, Akihito shuffled next to the pipe along the wall.

"Sit," Sagawa ordered. "It'll be easier if you sit first. Otherwise, you can just stand there. Your choice."

Glaring murder at Sagawa, Akihito crouched on the floor and thrust his right arm behind his back. He watched as Sagawa shoved the gun into the top of his jeans and clipped one cuff around his wrist.

"Lean back a little," Sagawa said.

Using his legs as pistons, Akihito pushed back hard, sending both himself and Sagawa sprawling backwards across the floor, feeling the hard outline of the gun in his back. He rolled off of Sagawa and brought his right arm around in a swift arc, the metal cuff making a satisfyingly sickening crack against the side of Sagawa's head. Roaring, Sagawa fell back, both hands reaching for his head. Akihito grabbed the gun from the man's pants and scrambled to his feet. Sagawa surged unsteadily forward, blood running down the side of his face, but stumbled to his knees. Akihito fired a shot into the floor in front of him, sending Sagawa back onto his heels, looking up at Akihito, dazed and bloody.

"I don't have anything to lose, either," Akihito said, holding the gun straight-armed and steady, pointed at Sagawa's head. "Now we're going to do this my way."


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N:** I have posted two chapters at once today. Make sure you read chapter 13 first!

 **Chapter 14**

"Go ahead and shoot me," Sagawa said. "You have every right."

It came back then, in one blinding flash, everything he had thought he could not remember, everything he didn't want to remember in details so clear, he knew that if Sagawa were to grab him again, he would recognize the texture of his fingerprints, the smell of his skin, the acidic cut of adrenaline tearing through his veins. He remembered not just those dark rooms and the nameless filth that frequented them—but before that in Macau, the strange hollow horror of being torn from his world and thrown into a limbo of not knowing, the beginning of losing himself.

Yes, he had the right. The right of every second of every day of those seven weeks, of the abomination of every man who had taken him, the bite of every needle that had gone into his arm—gods, he remembered every single one in that moment. And after, the right of those days when he was so sick, so lost he nearly folded beneath the weight of it, forced under by the fear he carried still, of turning away, of terrible loss…

For all of that, he surely had the right to end the life of the man who had set it all in motion. Didn't he?

Below him, Sagawa shifted position, pulling Akihito out of the poisonous fog of his memories. He looked at the man crouched beneath him and curled his finger around the trigger of the gun. Sagawa closed his eyes, his breath coming in short, audible bursts through open lips. Akihito felt his heart contract.

"Get out," he said.

Sagawa's eyes flew open, and he gaped at Akihito.

"What?"

"Go on. Hurry up before Asami gets here."

"Are you kidding?" Sagawa's brows closed over his eyes. "If you let me go, I won't give up. I'll come after you as long as you have value. I'm telling you. Shoot me while you have the chance."

"You won't have to come after me," Akihito said. "Leave it to me. I'll get Asami to find your brother."

"Just by asking?" Sagawa laughed. "You don't know him as well as you think you do."

 _You don't have that kind of value_. He knew now that he did, that this was the weapon Sagawa had made of him, a weapon he would take into his own hands.

"I think I do," he said.

"You're crazy." Sagawa tipped forward onto his knees and bowed his head. "If you want this to end, kill me. Or if you can't do it, Asami will do it for you when he gets here. But if you want to be kind to me at all, you'll do it yourself."

Akihito shook his head, shook away the black memories and tears that burned the back of his eyes.

"Don't use the word kind while you're telling me to kill you." The words came out in a ragged whisper that shamed him. "Just go. Please."

Sagawa looked at him, eyes searching Akihito's face while Akihito waited, lungs aching with arrested breath, praying the man would listen and go because he knew he could not pull the trigger, even if it meant his own life.

Sagawa hesitated a moment too long.

Asami sent the taxi away and stood looking up at the old two-story apartment building. Was Akihito even there or was this another goose chase? The crumbling, deserted neighborhood was almost too atmospheric, like something out of a crime drama.

Suoh had cased the building ahead of him and found no way in or out other than the single door at the top of an exterior metal staircase. He hadn't liked the set up and in a rare moment of candor, had made his feelings known, but Asami had sent him to wait in the next block. If Akihito was in fact in there, he had no choice.

He climbed the stairs, his shoes sending metallic echoes down the empty street with every step. At the top, he beat on the door and waited. From inside, he could hear the sound of voices, indistinct and low, arguing over something. Asami beat on the door again, harder this time.

"Sagawa!" he shouted. "You got what you wanted. I'm here. Open the door!"

More muddled voices and then one rose and swept over him, sweet, familiar, imperiled, still too far away, still not his.

"No, _no_! Let me, leave it to me!"

"Akihito?!" Asami shouted. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, Asami, yes!" Muted by the door, the voice carried a frantic edge but spilled in Akihito's usual rapid torrent of words. "Listen, it's okay. Everything's okay. Just—just go, okay? And take Suoh and whoever else is out there with you. Go back to the condo and—and I'll meet you there in about two hours. Okay? Okay, Asami?"

"What are you saying?" Asami leaned close, one hand splayed against the door. "What's going on? Sagawa! Open the door!"

He stepped back and scanned the door. It was metal but not steel. He could probably kick it in, but there wasn't enough room on the step to get enough momentum. No choice. He glanced up and down the street, where an occasional car passed behind him. Careful to keep his movements hidden by his coat, he pulled out one of his guns and fixed a silencer onto it.

"Akihito!" he shouted. "Stand away from the door!"

"No, Asami! _NO_!"

Asami flattened himself against the door, out of the way of the angle of ricochet and fired—once, twice, four times before the lock blew and the door gave against a sharp thrust from his shoulder. He burst into the apartment and stopped at the sight of Akihito standing in the middle of the room, half-turned, eyes wild.

"Akihito." He waited for the boy to run to him, to his protection, but Akihito did not move.

"I need you to listen to me, Asami," he said, voice shaking. "I mean really listen to me."

Behind him, a man—Sagawa—knelt on the floor, blood drying on the side of his face, his eyes fixed on Akihito. Feral instinct drove Asami forward, long-sought prey in his sites at last, blood surging, pushing him towards the kill. Before he could take more than a step, Akihito spun around, swinging his right arm straight out, a gun pointed directly at Asami.

"J-just stay th-there," Akihito stammered.

"What are you doing?" Asami froze, eyes on the gun. "Get out of the way!"

Akihito shook his head.

"I can't, not until you hear me out."

"Hear you—Do you know who that is?"

"Yes."

"Then get out of the way because I'm going to kill him for what he did to you."

 _For what he did to us_.

"No," Akihito said. "No more killing."

"I told you," Sagawa said, "I told you to just kill me."

"No one's going to kill you," Akihito said over his shoulder.

"What did he say to you?" Asami asked. "You know what he did. He can't lie his way out of that."

"He didn't lie," Akihito said. "He admitted all of it, and he told me why he did it."

"And that excuses everything he did?"

Was this some crazy kind of Stockholm Syndrome? Asami remembered—would never be able to erase the memory of Akihito on the floor of the condo, blue-lipped and lifeless, of carrying that limp body out of that filthy whorehouse, a broken voice begging _let me go_.

"I'm not excusing him. I—I just want this to be over. I want this to end."

"How do you think it's going to end if I let him go?" Asami raised his own gun, pointed at Sagawa.

"You don't understand," Akihito started.

"What am I not understanding? He wants to get to me through you, and he won't stop until either we're dead or he's dead."

"No!" Akihito's voice rose sharply. "That's not what he wants. That's why you need to listen to me. _Listen to me_!"

A motivated, frustrated Akihito with a gun. For the second time, Asami faced down that unpredictable combination.

"All right," he said with forced calm. "I'll listen to you. Just give me the gun first."

Akihito turned fully towards him, holding the gun now in both hands, a handcuff dangling crazily from his right wrist. Whatever had happened here, it had pushed Akihito again to his limit. How much farther before he went over the edge?

"Not until you hear me."

Sagawa slid his eyes towards Asami and then back to Akihito. Asami remembered thinking what a perfect revenge it would be for Sagawa if Akihito did shoot him and now the man had a front row seat.

"You tell me." Asami jerked his head at Sagawa. "Tell me how it feels to cower behind the man you tortured, to have him protect you."

"I didn't ask him to," Sagawa said.

"No, you wouldn't have to," Asami said. "That's what you don't know about him, about his heart and his willingness to forgive the lowest scum like you."

"Right." Sagawa smiled unpleasantly. "Because he's so pure and innocent."

"Yes." Asami looked at Akihito. " _YES_."

He had cause to know that capacity for forgiveness. How much had the boy forgiven him?

"Not like my brother, right?" Sagawa sneered. "He wasn't worth caring about after you dumped him!"

"He hustled me." Asami turned back to Sagawa. "He was already dirty when I met him. If you want revenge for how your brother turned out, it didn't start with me."

"This isn't about revenge! Gods, Asami!" Akihito shouted. "He just wants his brother back!"

Asami frowned, pieces falling—not into place but into a pile of sharp, unpleasant memories.

"What does that have to do with me, with us?" he asked. "Yes, I slept with his brother. That doesn't make me responsible for whatever happened to him."

"Of course not," Sagawa said. "Why should you give a shit when you can pick up a new toy like this one whenever you get bored?"

"Shut up!"

"It's because of who you are, Asami," Akihito said quietly. "Because you _can_ find him. That's why you should."

Asami took an involuntary step forward. The handcuffs on Akihito's wrist jingled slightly as he renewed his grip on the gun. Asami stopped, held out a placating hand.

"I already tried," he said. "After we figured out that this filth was the one who had taken you, I put out a search for his brother, but it turned up nothing."

"I know," Akihito said. "He told me about that. But if you do it yourself…You know the people who run those host clubs and brothels—or at least, you know people who know them. You know the dealers and the traffickers. More importantly, they know you. If you ask them yourself, you'll find him. That's how you found me."

"It's because of who I am that I can't do this," Asami said. "If I give in to this bastard after everything he's done, I undermine the power he wants to exploit."

"And there's no gain in it for you, I know." Akihito's eyes were level and grave. "What if I asked you—if I got down on my knees and begged you, would you do it? I did that once before, remember? But you told me I didn't have that kind of value."

He would remember that, Asami thought. It had been a lie, more to himself than anything. Back then, he needed to deny those feelings, and so he used those hard words to crush them and had crushed Akihito in the process. And now?

"Are you testing me?" he asked. "Is this some mythical quest to prove myself to you?"

Hadn't he already proved that he would turn the world inside out for this boy?

"No," Akihito said. "It's a chance to do something good."

"And then?"

He waited, watching that face that read like an open book, searching for some sign of what had to be there, a longing and need that would match his own, that would bring them together again, something stronger than the fear and pain that had torn them apart. But Akihito's faint smile told the wrong story.

"You'll have done something good," he said.

"Are you kidding me?" Sagawa shuffled forward on his knees. "He doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself. He doesn't give a shit about you—"

"You shut up!" Asami swung on him. "You have no right to even speak to him!"

"Kill me! Kill me!" Sagawa shouted at Asami, rising to a crouch. "He's not going to stop you! He didn't have the guts to shoot me. He'd never shoot you!"

Asami wasn't so sure, but it had to end—now.

"Get out of the way, Akihito!" He moved to close the distance, eyes on Sagawa. He grabbed the bug from under his collar and shouted "Now, Suoh. Move, now!"

"No, Asami! No! Don't make me—"

Sagawa lunged past Akihito, knocking him to the floor, the gun sent flying. He caught Asami full in the chest, knocking the wind out of him and taking them both down. Asami fell hard, his head cracking against the floor, forcing a grunt from him and sending sparks across a sudden darkness. Sagawa recovered first. Straddling Asami's chest, he grabbed his right wrist in both hands and banged it against the floor, trying to knock the gun out of Asami's grip. With Sagawa on his chest, Asami couldn't reach his second gun. He locked his left hand around Sagawa's jaw and tried to push him backwards, but Sagawa had gravity on his side. He pulled Asami's right hand up and slammed it down again. Asami felt bones crack and cried out, the gun dropping from his grasp.

And then Sagawa had the gun and brought it up against Asami's head. A shot rang out, and Sagawa's eyes widened in sudden surprise. He slumped and sprawled across Asami, fresh blood running from the side of his head.

The sound of feet clanging on the metal steps rang through the room. Suoh and Inaba burst in, guns drawn. Asami struggled to push himself up under the dead weight of Sagawa, the unpleasant sticky warmth of the man's blood oozed across his neck. Suoh holstered his gun, grabbed Sagawa by the ankles and dragged his body off Asami. Inaba knelt next to Asami and braced himself against Asami's shoulder, propping him up.

"You okay, boss?"

"I'm all right." He brushed Inaba away. "Where's Takaba?"

Across the room, Akihito sat bent over, legs folded under him, Sagawa's gun clutched in his hands. Asami got up, stumbled the few steps between them and went down on his knees in front of his boy. Slowly, gently, he eased the gun out of Akihito's grip and slid it across the floor to Inaba.

"Akihito?"

Asami took Akihito's chin between his thumb and fingers and raised his head. Akihito looked up at him and his eyes blurred with tears that swelled and spilled heedlessly down his cheeks.

"You're all right?" he asked, his voice small.

"Yes," Asami said.

"He said he wouldn't kill you. But he—" A great shudder took him, cutting through his words. "—he was going to shoot you. I couldn't—I couldn't let him—"

He was taken into Asami's arms, pressed against the reassuring breadth of him. Burying his face in Asami's chest, he breathed in his scent, felt his warmth, the beat of his heart, Asami's lips in his hair, moving, whispering.

"It's over. It's done."

Only because Sagawa was dead, because he'd killed him. He'd killed a man. It ripped through him like a white-hot blade, laying him open so that he wanted to scream with the pain. Everything he'd been through, everything that had been done to him wasn't enough. There had to be this, it had to end like this, with his heart cut out and bleeding on the floor. He gave way, sinking through Asami's arms and shaking with sobs.


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N** : Sorry to take so long again. Real world stuff got in the way. Don't you hate that? Anyway, more angst ahead. And my sincere thanks for everyone who is reading along and for the many thoughtful comments. We're slowly approaching a resolution! Please let me know if you're enjoying it! Thank you for reading!

 **Chapter 15**

Later, he couldn't quite remember the sequence of events—and some things not at all. Like how he got from the floor of that abandoned apartment to another apartment, sleek and elegant but unfamiliar, in a part of town he didn't recognize. All he knew was that he was made to sit on a plush leather sofa and was handed a glass and told to drink. He did as he was told, downing the amber liquid in one go. The fiery trail it burned down his esophagus and into his stomach was the first thing he had felt since the jarring kick of the pistol in his hands. That heat spread through his body and melted his joints so that he collapsed against the sofa like a doll, limp and glassy-eyed.

Voices murmured around him, voices he knew, but it was too much trouble to focus and sort them into individuals uttering words with meaning. He let them buffet about him until one voice, deeper than the others, rumbled up close against him and strong hands closed over his shoulders.

"It's shock. You're in shock, Takaba."

He was pulled and prodded into a bathroom, where his shirt was stripped off over his head and his jeans and briefs dropped to his ankles.

"Come on," the voice said. "Lift your feet."

He was eased into a tub of warm water that covered him to his shoulders and drifted steam over his face. The heat from the liquor spread out to meet the warmth of the water until he felt he was dissolving and didn't particularly mind. But the images, the fear and guilt would not dissolve so easily, and when the hand that had lowered him into the water began to slide away, he made a frantic grab for it.

"Don't leave me alone," he whispered, ashamed.

"Never."

But he needed more assurance than that firm grip. His hand slid up the long muscles of Asami's forearm, and his touch seemed to let loose something in the other man, for he was suddenly pushed back, Asami's lips covering his, a forceful, physical answer to his plea. A new heat shot through his core, driving out the soporific warmth of water and spirits, drowning shame and horror. He opened his lips willingly and his mouth was filled with the thick probing of Asami's tongue. Akihito flung wet arms around the other man's shoulders and pulled himself up until he floated somewhere between the water and cool air.

With a guttural growl, Asami scooped Akihito out of the tub and carried him dripping into a bedroom, where he dropped him onto a vast bed and began removing his own clothes, unmindful of the tape Kirishima had wrapped around his right hand. Naked, he lowered himself onto the bed, drew Akihito into his arms and pressed his lips against his ear.

"Hold onto me."

Asami's lips trailed down Akihito's neck and nestled in the hollow of his collar bone, warm breath and flesh so meltingly soft and yet electric against his own pulled Akihito's mind towards a foggy promise of pleasure and oblivion. Sex was Asami's greatest tool, weapon, answer and argument, and Akihito could not fight it.

"Ah!"

He wrapped his arms around Asami, curling his body seekingly into the bend of the other man's torso, the water that had begun to cool on his skin warming between them. Asami's hand slipped between his thighs and Akihito opened to him, throwing his knees wide in thoughtless abandon. Maybe it was okay to just let it happen, to be completely absorbed in Asami, to take him in so deeply that there was room for nothing else, not even himself.

It had been nearly a month since he had felt the hardness of Asami pressing into him, and with little preparation, it was more pain than anything at first, speared on Asami's cock, but it seemed right that it should hurt. He tightened his hold on Asami's shoulders and pushed himself forcefully onto his length, sending a white shard of pain lancing along his spine. He bit down, smothering his cries into needful, helpless grunts.

Asami seemed to understand what he was doing, holding still and letting Akihito impale himself again and again. It wasn't until it began to feel good, until the pain gave way to spreading waves of urgent pleasure that Akihito cried, hot tears of guilt that rolled into his hair. And then Asami took over, easing him back onto the bed and changing the frantic lunges to a rolling rhythm that lapped them against one another, moving with gentle, shallow thrusts so that they seemed almost fused, and Akihito accepted this fullness as a part of himself and never wanted to feel empty again.

Asami moved slowly, tenderly pressing him towards release. There were no mocking little nothings this time, no filthy taunts to force him into lewd admissions. Instead, Asami held him in safe arms as he spilled helplessly into a climax that cut with its own pain, a pleasure he shouldn't be granted. And in the aftermath, Asami pulled him close, Akihito's head on his chest and murmured his own brand of absolution.

"Give it to me, Akihito. It's my sin, not yours."

###

Gradually, the fall and rise of Asami's chest beneath him took on the languid rhythm of sleep. There was no such ease for Akihito, who lay feeling Asami's seed leak onto his thighs with a sinking dread. In the moment, there had been no thought of condoms or risk. His desperate need had carried them both away. The sin Asami claimed as his own could very well destroy him in the end, and then that too would come back to Akihito.

When he felt the broad hand on his shoulder slacken and fall away, Akihito pushed himself up and looked down at his lover, who could sleep as though these crushing weights were nothing, a few betraying strands of black hair strayed across his forehead. It had always been easier to give in, to let Asami do what he wanted. From the start, this relationship had turned on a battle he couldn't win, to hold onto himself in the overwhelming presence of this man. This time it was beyond surrender. To hand this grave wrong to Asami would be the final admission that he was nothing, that even his soul was not his own. If he lost that, if he gave up his conscience for this man, he was damned in his own heart, no matter how much he wanted it.

And he wanted it—oh! So badly, he could hardly contain himself. It could be enough, to exist only within the sight of those amber eyes. That was the terror of it, to live only within Asami and to burn with him when he inevitably went up in flames. It would be too late then to go on without him. It was almost too late now. Ever so gently, he bent and pressed his lips against Asami's, warm and soft with sleep. A funny little moan strangled itself in his throat, and he swallowed it down.

As carefully as he could, he slipped out of the bed. The apartment was silent and thankfully vacant. He found his clothes in a rumpled heap on the bathroom floor and shrugged them on. Dressed, he searched hurriedly around the apartment until he found a small office with paper and pens. There was no time to say what he ought to say, even if he could think of a way to explain it. And so he wrote four words, folded the paper and left it on the bed.

As he passed the dining room, he spotted his phone on the table along with the bag of camera equipment. Asami's men were professionals and nothing would have been left behind at that other apartment that might have connected any of them with Sagawa, if anyone ever even noticed that Sagawa was gone.

Akihito pocketed the phone, put on his shoes and backed into the hallway, straight into Suoh, standing guard.

"Sorry."

"Does the boss know you're going out?"

"Ah, yeah." Akihito hesitated and lied. "I'll be right back. I just have to go talk to my mom."

"Go back inside," Suoh said. "I'll call Kirishima and have him bring a car over."

A little fury flared in Akihito, so casually was it assumed he was so helpless that he could not be trusted to be outside on his own.

"Look," he said, stomping down his anger. "Asami's asleep. I don't want to disturb him. You don't want to disturb him. And anyway, there's no one after me anymore, right?"

"You should wait until he wakes up."

If he didn't go now, if he allowed himself to be pulled back in, he was afraid he would never have this kind of courage again. Fear and anger wrapped around the sucking pain of what he had done and was about to do, forming a hard, aching knot in his chest.

"You know what? I'm not going to do that," he said firmly.

"Takaba-kun," Suoh said wearily. "This really isn't the day to play these kinds of games."

If he was to pull together the broken pieces of himself, it could start right here. He'd outrun and outsmarted Suoh before. The guy might have fifteen centimeters and thirty kilograms on him, but Akihito figured he had one advantage: Suoh wouldn't want to hurt him. If he ran, Suoh wasn't going to shoot him or even tackle him. He only had to keep out of reach of those massive paws.

He bolted for the door to the stairs and was halfway down the first flight before he heard Suoh shouting after him, his voice booming in the empty stairwell. Three flights down, Akihito exited the stairwell, caught an elevator headed down and was out on the street, hopefully before Suoh could shake Asami out of bed.

Out on the sidewalk, he was shocked to find that it was still daylight. Was it possible it was still the same day? It had only been hours since he'd knocked on the door of that apartment? But there was no time to gape over it because another of Asami's men was headed towards him, phone to his ear, obviously getting orders from Suoh or Asami himself.

Akihito turned and broke, sprinting down the street, ignoring the pounding footsteps behind him and shouts for him to stop. He ran, darting through crowds of people with steps like a dancer, a small bubble of confidence rising in this remembered knowledge of his agility. He had skills. He could use them.

More than that, the sense of power surging from the force of the muscles of his legs driving him forward flooded his brain. Endorphins, whatever it was, it loosened that knot in his chest so that the cocooned anguish of his crime was set free and he could feel it in every jarring stride. His heart had broken at last when he pulled that trigger. He had had no choice and hatred for Sagawa—that he had been forced to become the man's executioner—rode alongside involuntary grief. It wasn't remorse that had shredded his heart. It was the knowledge that there was no turning back from such an act.

He ran until the pain became physically real and he was forced to stop, hands braced on his burning thighs. If he was running, it could not be running away this time. It had to be towards something. If he was to live with what he had done, it had to mean something. What, he didn't know, but he was certain where he needed to start. He made his way to the nearest train station, pointed towards his parents' home—not for refuge or safety but for the contents of an unopened box.

###

"I'm sorry, Asami-sama," Hidaka's voice came back over the phone. "We've lost him."

"Return to the building."

Asami ended the call and stood looking down at his phone, willing it to ring, to signal a response to his texts, but nothing came. No word, no sign, no explanation other than the piece of paper with those four words that sent a dangerous fury hurtling through his veins. Akihito had run again. He had cause, he had reason and right, and a sane man would let him go, but Asami had never claimed that particular failing.

 _I will always come for you_ , he had promised. But it was as much a threat as well. No matter what had happened, he would not let Akihito walk away with four inadequate and demanding words. He unfolded the paper and looked at it again, at Akihito's hasty, nearly illegible scrawl. Four words was all he had been granted.

 _I'm sorry. Find him._

He tore the sheet across again and again until it was in fragments that rained through his fingers, onto the floor. After everything they had been through, he deserved more and he would take it.

###

"Leaving to go where?"

His mother had followed him into his room and stood watching while he tumbled socks and underwear and a few clean shirts into a backpack.

"I don't know. I'm sorry. You have every reason not to trust me right now, but—"

He stopped and looked at her and wished there was some way he could reassure her when he had only the vaguest sense himself of what he was doing. 'I need to figure things out,' from a child who had fucked up in the worst possible ways wasn't going to cut it. Nothing would until—and if—he came back.

So there really was nothing for him—who had once been the master of wild excuses and justifications—to tell her and he added another burden to his pack along with his underwear.

But he had to move. It was only a matter of a very short time before Asami tracked him here, and so there was no leisure for long conversations and revelations. No time to not hurt her.

He knelt next to the box of camera equipment that he had not touched since he'd been home and stripped off the tape. Inside, his cameras and lenses were all carefully wrapped and stowed. He lifted them lovingly and set them on the floor next to him.

"What are you doing with those?" his mother asked.

He looked at her, thinking it was a silly question until he realized why she asked. Somewhere, some part of her considered him an addict. It read clearly in the troubled curve of her eyebrows and the uneasy set of her lips. His own face burned in response and he turned back to the box of equipment.

"I'm not going to sell them," he said, unable to keep a sharp edge from his voice.

"You're going to take pictures?"

That hadn't specifically been his plan, and yet…

"I don't know," he said. "It's just—I need to take them with me."

It was necessary, a primal urge. As soon as he said it, he felt as though he had recovered the use of a vital part of himself that had been paralyzed and dead.

His mother picked up his backpack and dumped his hastily packed clothing onto the bed.

"In that case," she said. "You should put them on the bottom. Otherwise, your clothes will be all wrinkled."

Open-mouthed, he watched her shake out his rumpled shirts, fold them and roll them into neat cylinders.

"Actually," he said in hazy confusion. "I was going to borrow one of Dad's camera bags."

"Go get one." She gave another shirt a brisk shake. "I'll repack this for you."

He got slowly to his feet, still uncertain what had eased her mind and smoothed the tension from her face, but went to her, put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek.

She caught his jaw in her hand and pressed her face to his.

"I do trust you," she murmured. "But I worry about you, too. I can't help it. Will you at least let me know where you are?"

He nodded.

"Go on then."

He left her, wishing he was able to tell her what she needed to know, wishing he knew himself. His father's studio was in a small outbuilding across a tiny courtyard, locked and shuttered now while he was away. His father would have his treasured, favorite bag with him and wouldn't mind if Akihito took any spares left behind. They had that trust between them, at least.

Akihito unlocked the door and flicked on the lights. He had grown up in this studio, had grown up respecting the equipment responsible for the arresting images that covered the walls. He stopped unconsciously in front of his favorites: one of a kite festival in Hamamatsu, the other of red-robed boy monks in Bhutan, playing football in a dusty courtyard.

Takaba Daichi had started out as an investigative photographer, but the work Akihito admired was the work on these walls, the work that evolved from who his father was. There was the image of the gunman in Angola that had won him a Henko award and the photo of survivors of a capsized boat of African refugees off the coast of Sicily that had been a Pulitzer finalist.

This was the work he had hoped to find in himself. When had he lost sight of that? It wasn't Asami who had pulled him from that path. He couldn't lay that charge at his feet. It had been some other potent lure, something in that other work that had fed him even while it wore him down so that now, when he most needed something that was his own to build on, he had nothing. Even a force as powerful as Asami could not fill that void. No, that wasn't right, it wasn't honest. He could but it left Akihito unable to stake any clear claim of his own. And it was that—not Sagawa, not the heroin—that had set him running.

Where—then—did he go from here? Back to Asami to fight it out once more? His whole body answered a quickening "yes." The images on the wall offered another option.

He pulled out his phone and turned it on. Three missed calls, all from Asami and texts he deleted without reading, could not allow himself to read. Instead, he called a different number. It rang three times before a beautiful voice answered in sharp, irritated Cantonese he couldn't fully understand but was fairly certain was along the lines of "Who the hell are you and how did you get this number?"

"It's Akihito," he said, cutting off the irritable stream of words. "I'm sorry I haven't been in touch in such a long time, but I need your help. I'm calling in what you owe me."


	16. Chapter 16

A/N: So sorry for the delay on this chapter! I have no legitimate excuses other than there isn't enough time in the day. Thank you again to everyone who has been reading and for leaving such thoughtful reviews. I appreciate them greatly! On we go...

 **Chapter 16**

Fei Long was penitently efficient. Akihito picked up his pre-paid first class ticket and was in Hong Kong early the next morning, facing down a stunned Fei Long in his luxurious high rise.

"So that's what I'm asking," he said, shifting a little from foot to foot, too pumped with adrenaline and agitated by memories of the last time he was in this room to stand still. "You helped get me out of that place through your connections. I need you to get me back in. I mean, not literally, right? Not that particular place but you know what I mean."

"I do." Fei Long frowned. "So that you can expose them, the people who run those places?"

"Yes."

Fei Long shook his head mournfully.

"Akihito, I can't."

"I knew it." Akihito paced, fuming. "You guys, you're all the same. You twist governments around your little finger but when I ask for something, it's impossible."

"You make the most incredible requests."

Akihito stopped and pointed at Fei Long.

"You owe me."

"I'm not disputing that." Fei Long watched the young man fidgeting in front of him. He knew that things had not gone well since Akihito had been rescued, but this thin, pale, jittery creature had been a shock. "I'm concerned about you. I think I know your purpose, but I wonder if you'll find the answers you're looking for in that direction."

"Who says I'm looking for answers?" Akihito snapped. "This is about work and fighting against these guys with the only weapon I have."

"Your camera?"

"Yes!"

Fei Long thought he ought to recognize the fire in Akihito's eyes. It had burned him often enough in the time they were together (as he preferred to think of that now-regrettable interval.) But this was different than even the worst of those days, a kind of desperation that made him fear how far Akihito might go.

"Why are you really here, Akihito?" he asked gently. "What happened?"

Akihito frowned, brows lowering over his eyes.

"I told you," he said. "I need to do this."

"You understand better than most how this particular corner of the world operates." Fei Long's voice remained quiet and measured. "You understand that you cannot win."

"No, I don't." Akihito began to pace again, words tumbling around him. "If that was true, if everyone believed that, then what would be the point in anything? In being nice and decent and kind? Everyone would just give up! I'm not giving up! I have to do something! I have to—it has to—it should never—"

The torrent of words cut off and Akihito stopped, the loathsomely familiar sense of airlessness crushing him, forcing him to gasp, underscoring Fei Long's words and prodding him to impotent fury at his own helplessness. He dropped to his knees on Fei Long's beautiful carpet and curled over, holding himself.

Fei Long rose in alarm

"Akihito!"

"It's okay," Akihito said breathlessly, blindly thrusting out one hand. To be touched now was the worst thing—especially in this room, by Fei Long—and he was afraid of how he might react. "I'm all right."

He dug his own fingers into his flesh to try to pull himself out of this hated spiral. Sagawa's death had done nothing to stop these episodes or block out the memories of those hands and dark rooms, of the faces of the other boys. If anything, it had thrown them into horrifying relief. All of the torture he had endured had come to nothing, meant nothing. And the piercing loss of the thing he had walked—no—run away from. It had to mean something! Or he couldn't bear it.

"You're not all right." He heard Fei Long's voice as if from far away.

"Nnh." He shook his head. "Just give me a minute."

"Tell me what's going on," Fei Long said. "Why did you come here?"

Akihito almost laughed. It was kind of funny, if you thought about it too much, coming to the man who had almost broken him for help in forgetting the man who finally had.

"Sagawa's dead," he mumbled.

"The man who abducted you."

Akihito nodded.

"I killed him."

He heard Fei Long let out a long, audible breath.

"Then it's over."

Akihito's head jerked up.

"It's not over!" he shouted. "Not for me! I'm not like you and Asami! You kill a man and you think that ends it. It doesn't work that way for me. I have to do something! All of this shit—I have to make it mean something!"

Fei Long stood, letting Akihito's anger buffet against him, smothering the instinct to reach out to him and comfort him physically, a gesture he knew the younger man would not welcome. Akihito must be truly desperate, he thought, to have turned to him.

"Tell me," he said quietly, "does Asami know you're here?"

"I—I've left him."

Akihito had thought it. He had felt it, running down the streets of Roppongi. But this was the first time he had said it out loud, three dull, simple words for such a terrible, complex, searing thing.

Fei Long groaned and sat back down.

"I wish you had told me that up front," he said, rubbing a hand across his chin.

"Why? Are you afraid he'll come storming in here?"

"I'm not afraid…though Asami storming in here is certainly a distinct possibility. It's only good manners to provide such a critical detail up front. Forewarned and all of that."

"You are afraid."

Fei Long shot him a sharp scowl, still capable of petty reflexes.

"The only thing I'm afraid of is that you are willfully disregarding the danger of what you ask. Even with my connections, you know the risk you would be taking for a minimal return. If you throw yourself away like that, then it truly will come to nothing."

"It's already nothing." Akihito got to his feet in shaky stages. "I can't leave it like this. I have to try. You understand that, right?"

What Fei Long understood was the tenacious nature of the young man in front of him, his wide eyes still dangerously open and clear. He sighed again.

"Very well," he said, "I make no promises but I will do what I can for you—if you do something for me, first."

Akihito's brow ridged obdurately.

"I can't talk to Asami, not right now."

"That is not my request," Fei Long said. "I want you to come with me."

"Where?"

"To a house I own, out in the country. There are some people I would like you to meet."

###

It was late in the afternoon before the information had reached Asami via Kirishima and various illicit contacts and favors that the passport of one Takaba Akihito had been processed through Hong Kong customs that morning.

Asami stood at the expansive window of his office and stared unseeingly across the city. The news had come like a slap in the face, and he felt the sting of it as though it had been real. Akihito had to know how deeply it would cut, to turn from Asami and run to Fei Long. The fact that he knew but that it hadn't stopped him drove the knife even deeper and banked the fire of Asami's anger.

What was there in Hong Kong? What could Fei Long do for him that he, Asami, could not? Sagawa was dead. Any residual pain or regret that had not died with him would not stop at Japan's borders. It would follow Akihito wherever he might run. And there was nowhere Akihito could run that Asami could not follow and bring him back and make things as they were before.

 _You are mine. You were made for me and I will not let you go._

He was about to call Kirishima back into the office when the cell phone in his breast pocket vibrated. At sight of the number on the screen, a hard smile cut across his face. He put the phone to his ear.

"You are in possession of something of mine," he said before the person on the other end could speak. "I trust you are calling to make arrangements to return it."

" _Would it be possible,_ " Fei Long said, his elegant voice turned peevish, _"for you to stop flexing your muscles for five minutes and listen to me? This isn't what you think._ "

"You have never known what I think," Asami returned.

" _For Akihito's sake, I'll ignore that. Wouldn't you like to know why he's here_?"

"It's fairly obvious," Asami said, not in the mood to play Fei Long's games. "You're providing a plush little hideout for him."

" _So wrong, Asami_." The peevishness was replaced by smug satisfaction. " _Do you really know him so little_?"

For all he claimed to care for Akihito, Fei Long was enjoying this on some level. Asami's hand contracted around the phone.

"Enlighten me, then," he said tightly.

" _Very well_." Fei Long's voice became serious. " _He asked me to help him infiltrate the human trafficking ring he was sold through in Dongguan_."

"What?!"

" _He has it in mind to do some sort of exposé_."

"Tell me you refused."

" _Give me some credit_ ," Fei Long huffed. " _But it is hard to dissuade him from taking action on his own. He is very stubborn_."

A quality that had been his salvation and could be his destruction, Asami knew.

"Send him home," he said.

" _He isn't a package I can simply put a return label on_."

"Then I'm coming to get him."

" _Obviously, I can't stop you if you are determined,_ " Fei Long said, " _but is that really how you want him back? Against his will and certain to run again_?"

Fortunately for Fei Long, there were 2,800 kilometers between his throat and Asami's hands.

"You are stepping way out of line," Asami growled.

" _Perhaps it's time someone did_. _You say I have never known what you think but I know this. You want to take control of this situation, of what he's feeling and make him feel what you think he should._ "

"You are in no position to make judgments."

" _Maybe I understand more than you think I do,_ " Fei long said. _"After all, I had to let him go once._ "

"Are you really comparing what you did to this?"

" _The situations are not all that different. You dragged him unwillingly into your world. It was an abduction of another kind._ "

Asami started to speak but Fei Long cut off his angry denial.

" _Why did you take him, Asami?_ " Fei Long's voice had softened." _Because he was so outside of everything you know? So untouched by the darkness of our world? How long did you think it would be before he was marked by that darkness? And then what? You would have cast him aside in any case_."

"Never."

The word cut through his throat and came out like a gasp. After all that he had done to hold onto Akihito—no, never.

Fei Long let out a sigh—resigned, unhappy.

" _I suppose it was a bit much for you to accept me as mediator,_ " he said. " _You will do as you like. But think it through, Asami. Is it the right thing to do_?"

Of course it was right, he wanted to bellow into the phone. What else was there to do? Wait? For what? For Akihito to decide…

"You are a serpent-tongued bastard," Asami said.

" _Flattery has never been your forte._ "

Asami ended the call and stood, Fei Long's words echoing around him. _Why did you take him?_ It was more than just grabbing something he wanted. What had started as an idle diversion had flipped on him and he found himself in that most ridiculous of positions, caught in his own trap.

Most people assumed he had everything—money, power, respect—but they didn't know how empty all of that was. Hell, he hadn't known himself until the day he saw Takaba Akihito jump off the roof of a building, hadn't truly understood what he had until he had come home to an apartment that was dark, quiet, deserted.

The life he had built for himself was tailored to his drive to possess and control, so he supposed he had only himself to blame that the one thing he wanted—no, needed most was incompatible with the dark, hollow world he had created. How long before that darkness tainted and drowned that light? He couldn't blame it all on Sagawa, couldn't mark it from the moment Akihito pulled the trigger and ended Sagawa's life. No. It began when he handed Suoh a handkerchief and a bottle of chloroform and gave the order.

So what did you do when the act of possession corrupted the very essence of the thing you desired? A good man would let go, but he had never pretended to be a good man and he couldn't let go. He could be in Hong Kong before midnight and have Akihito back in Tokyo by dawn. This time… _this time_ he would take the boy's own advice and tie him down. He would lock him away and put a twenty-four hour guard on him and this time…this time…

He stalked to his desk and reached for the new intercom, knocking over a stack of neglected reports and sending them sliding across the blotter. He drew back his arm to sweep them to the floor when the name on one of the folders caught his eye.

Slowly, almost unwillingly, he drew the folder towards him, opened it and sank into his chair, staring at the photo of the beautiful young man inside. There was no struggle to remember this time because it no longer mattered what had happened in the past. All that mattered now was the present that had been shattered into pieces he couldn't put back together. He dug into the pocket of his coat for his lighter and held up the photo, intent on burning it, consigning whatever memories there were of Sagawa Kenji to ash.

 _Find him, Asami._

Why should he? Why should he care what some big-eyed, idealistic kid who kept running away from him wanted or thought? He'd made a promise to always come for him, but if the kid no longer wanted that, then what? You could say "You can never leave me" all you wanted but in the end, it's what they did, the ones that he loved.

He flipped open the lighter and flicked a flame into life.

###

In the outside office, Kirishima waited. It had been more than an hour since the report had come through from Hong Kong and still no instructions from Asami. If there was an office pool, it would be even money on the private jet being ordered, but Kirishima wasn't so sure. After the last few months, he was primed to expect the unexpected, and when the intercom barked at last and Asami called him in, he rose and entered the inner office with a carefully governed expression and a mind prepared—he hoped—for anything.

Asami sat at his desk, half-turned towards the window, reading a report and absently flipping the lid of his lighter open and closed, though he was not smoking.

"Bring me a list of all the male brothels and host clubs in Tokyo and the syndicates that oversee them," he said without looking up. "Include names, addresses and contact info on all the leaders of those syndicates. I want to start at the top, you understand. And have Suoh bring the car in an hour. We're going to pay a few calls."

So Takaba was in Hong Kong with Asami's arch rival and they were going to shake down some pimps. Given the boss's more unusual appetites, it could have been worse.

"Yes, sir."

Kirishima bowed and turned to attend to his task.

"Kirishima," Asami called him back.

"Asami-sama?"

"Bring me the rest of the files."

Kirishima floundered again.

"Which files are those, sir?"

"The x-files."

That was Asami's little joke for the records on his former lovers. Kirishima bowed again and left the office before Asami could throw him any fresh curves. Whorehouses and ex-lovers. They were all in for a treat, it seemed.

###

Funny, the places you could end up in life without planning, without thinking it out. For instance, if you'd told Akihito a year ago that he'd be sitting willingly next to Fei Long, driving around Hong Kong in a luxurious Bentley, he'd have run for days. But here he was. Because he could think of nowhere else to go.

The car pulled up at last in front of two tall iron gates set into a long, high brick wall. The gates opened electronically and the car passed through and along a sweeping drive to a huge Western-style mansion, what Fei Long referred to as his "guest house." Akihito shied a bit when the gates had clanged shut behind the Bentley, and Fei Long had given him a wry little smile.

"Don't worry," he said. "It's to keep the world out, not to keep anyone in. My current guests appreciate the security."

"So who are these guests?" Akihito asked.

"It's too difficult to explain," Fei Long said. "Much better for you to see for yourself. Come. Oh, and bring your camera."

The whole purpose of the visit was for him to meet these friends of Fei Long's. He knew it was a wild swing at trying to distract him and couldn't for the life of him imagine just who or what the other man had holed up in this gothic horror of a place, but he'd made a promise and so he climbed out of the car and followed Fei Long into the house.

Inside, they were greeted by half-a-dozen domestic staff—mostly women who fluttered and sighed around Fei Long like breathless, adoring butterflies and for a horrified moment, Akihito wondered if "guest house" was a euphemism for "orgy palace" and Fei Long's idea of a distraction was a tried and true fuck fest. But Fei Long gently put the women off with thanks for their work and promises to speak with them later and led Akihito out of the main house and into a more modern wing where he stopped beside the open door of a large room and held up his finger.

"Listen," he whispered to Akihito.

From inside, Akihito could hear a number of voices, male voices, some of them not yet broken, all reciting something in a language he couldn't understand. He frowned and looked at Fei Long, puzzled.

"They're learning to read," Fei Long said. "None of them could read, can you believe it? They're learning in Mandarin to begin with, but they all have a good start on speaking Cantonese and are working on English."

"So…ýou're running a school?" Akihito asked, still confused.

"You haven't guessed yet." Fei Long smiled. "I wonder if you would even recognize them. They've cleaned up quite well."

He extended his arm—still loath to touch Akihito—gesturing him forward. Akihito stepped past him and peered around the doorway.

Inside the large bright room, ten boys ranging in ages from about twelve to eighteen sat at four long tables, their eyes on a small middle-aged woman who stood at the front of the room, leading them through a verse printed on a white board that hung on the wall. It was a classroom, a very small school.

"Chu Li Yan," Fei Long called.

The woman turned and crossed the room to them, smiling.

"Master Fei Long," she said. "Is this our special visitor from Japan?"

"Yes, this is Takaba Akihito," Fei Long said. Both Fei Long and Chu Li Yan spoke in Japanese so that Akihito could understand them. "He would like to see the progress the boys are making."

He would? Well, his fears of a wild orgy could probably be put to rest.

"Oh, yes," Akihito said quickly. "That would be nice."

"Please," Chu Li Yan said. "Come in."

She turned to the boys and said something to them in Mandarin. The boys rose and looked at Akihito, owl-eyed. On Chu Li Yan's signal, they all spoke as one, in Japanese.

"Thank you, Takaba-san. We will work hard."

Chu Li Yan turned to Fei Long and Akihito, still smiling.

"If we'd had a bit more warning you were coming," she said, "we would have prepared something more for you, but they're coming along, don't you think?"

Akihito stared at the boys, who stared back at him. They were all neatly dressed in white shirts, blue striped ties and black slacks. They were clean and well-fed and had lost the pallor of those who never saw daylight, and if their eyes still spoke of dark, unwelcome knowledge, they were not blank and hopeless as he remembered. Akihito looked at Fei Long, his own eyes cutting the other man to his core.

"Is it really them?"

"Yes," Fei Long said. "There were twelve, but we reunited two that had been abducted with their families. The rest have no families or had been sold by their own parents. To return them would only mean they would be sold again. As you see, they are being taught to read and write. When they are old enough, if they wish, I will find them work. Don't worry! It will be legitimate work. I own several five star hotels which are always in need of competent staff. I will see to it that they are kept from my other business interests."

Akihito looked around the room, taking in how nicely appointed it was, a row of computers along the window and a small lounge with sofas, a television and even an Xbox in the back. And Chu Li Yan, who reminded him a bit of Dr. Nagato. So clean and bright and normal…and so different. He found it suddenly hard to swallow.

"Why did they thank me?" His voice came out in a hoarse whisper.

"Because you were their salvation," Fei Long said quietly. "They were taken out of Dongguan because you asked it, because you cared about have been wanting to see you and tell you what that means to them."

He hadn't forgotten about them, gods knew he couldn't forget. But he had forgotten that he had asked for them to be taken away from that place. Or he had been too afraid to ask what had happened to them, where they were.

"You're going to a lot of expense here," he said, trying to push away the swell of powerful emotions that he felt could pull him under. "I don't think I could ever pay you back."

Fei Long gave him another of those odd, wry smiles.

"As you say, I am in your debt. This doesn't begin to make us even." He tossed his head, shaking away his own unwieldy feelings. "Besides, Asami pays for most of this."

Asami. Why had he never said? He wished—oh he wished that he had known.

"Would you like to talk with them?" Fei Long asked. "Chu Li Yan can translate for you."

Akihito could not trust himself to speak and only nodded. Yes, he would like to very much.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

In the end, it took only three days, a dozen phone calls, a few personal appearances, and one or two icily polite threats and reminders of debts and transgressions to gain the necessary level of cooperation. By the end of the week, Asami had the address of a specialized brothel in Ueno and the promise that the man he sought was there. It was almost laughable to think the whole mess could have been solved in three days.

He was no stranger to this process, though he hadn't patronized an establishment like this in years. He followed the proprietor up a staircase and down a dimly lit hall. The place was cramped and shabby but nothing remotely close to the horror of the cesspit where he had found Akihito. It did, however, cater to a particular fetish, denoted by the heavy ring of keys on the proprietor's belt. Out-and-out rape wasn't on the menu here, but dubious consent certainly was. The proprietor unlocked a red-painted door and stood back.

"One hour," he said.

"You're too generous," Asami said.

The door closed behind him as he entered a room as dimly lit as the hall and smelling of musk—both of incense and the skin. Cheap kimonos were pinned to the walls, and a red scarf over the only lamp gave everything a slightly nightmarish hue. In the background, the bass of some slow, anonymous music throbbed hypnotically from a small sound system. The whore came out of the bathroom, loosely wrapped in a wildly patterned yukata, running the tip of his finger over his gums in a gesture that triggered a faint memory. He was still beautiful, though even in the low light, signs of erosion were beginning to show, the long term effects of his drug of choice. Hard to remember that he was only a few years older than Akihito.

"An hour, huh?" he said. "You've got a high opinion of yourself."

He looked at Asami without recognition—or perhaps he looked without seeing.

"You used to know."

That brought the other man's head around with a snap. His face hardened for a moment but then a sort of professionalism—or the innate instincts of a born grifter took over and he smiled.

"So we've met before," he said. "It's nice of you to remember me."

Asami snorted softly.

"Too bad I can't say the same of you," he said. "You clearly don't know who I am, but don't worry. I'm not the type to be easily offended."

"That's right." Kenji sidled up to Asami and slipped one arm around his shoulders. "I remember that about you. I remember what you like, too."

His other hand snaked between them, sliding under Asami's coat, fingers reaching into the waistband of his slacks. Asami caught it before it could go further.

"I remember it a little differently," he said, taking Kenji by both wrists and holding him at bay. "You were after more than what was in my pants, but it doesn't matter. That's not why I'm here."

Kenji frowned, beautiful eyebrows straightening over beautiful eyes.

"Who are you?" His eyes narrowed and then widened and he stepped back, jerking his wrists out of Asami's grasp. "Fuck! It's you!"

For a second, Kenji took on the look of a wild animal gone to ground. Realizing the bulk of Asami stood between him and the door, he retreated as far as he could, sitting on the bed and lighting a cigarette with hastily assembled nonchalance.

"If this is about revenge," he said, smiling more warily than seductively, "you took your sweet time about it."

Now it was Asami's turn to frown. Was it possible Kenji had known what his brother was up to all along?

"Why would I want revenge?" he asked, refusing the cigarette pack Kenji held out to him.

"Oh, right. Not your brand. See? I do remember." Kenji exhaled a veil of smoke over his face. "I also remember how pissed you were over that one little deal. It's been…what? Years now. You really take that whole dish-best-served-cold thing seriously, don't you?"

"Maybe I have more recent grievances," he said. "When was the last time you spoke to your brother?"

The remnants of some old emotion flickered across Kenji's face.

"Leave Jiro out of it,' he said, his voice low. "I told you he didn't know anything about that deal. It was all me. He'd gotten in trouble because of me and I wanted to help him. That's all."

So he didn't know what Jiro had done—or how it had ended.

"Then you haven't heard," Asami said.

"I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't get out much."

Kenji suddenly looked young and almost afraid. Asami cursed silently. All things considered, he took no joy in what he was about to do.

"Jiro's dead."

Kenji bent and covered his face with trembling hands, shaking ash over his knees. Asami slipped the cigarette from his fingers.

"Did you kill him?" The voice came muffled through his hands.

"No." Asami crushed the cigarette in a nearby ashtray. "He killed himself."

It was the truth.

Kenji crossed his arms over his face and shook silently. Asami waited, absently swirling the cigarette butt through the ashes. Finally, Kenji sighed and drew the sleeve of his yukata over his eyes.

"Nice of you to come all this way to tell me," he said. "Part of the revenge?"

Asami dusted off the tips of his fingers.

"You owe Takakura Kaoru five million yen," he said. "That's why you're here, right?"

Kenji looked up, brows knotted over red-rimmed eyes.

"What?"

"Is the amount correct? Five million?"

"Yeah, I guess. That sounds about right. But—"

"I will pay it," Asami cut him off.

"Are you—" Kenji laughed a short, hard little laugh. "Are you _buying_ me?"

"Don't flatter yourself," Asami said. "I'm paying what you owe, that's all."

"Right." Another grim little laugh. "You're a well-known philanthropist. Besides, I never was your type."

"I'll make the arrangements with Takakura in the morning." Asami produced a business card and held it out. "Come to Sion Corp. at two tomorrow afternoon. You will be given a further five million and an airplane ticket to anywhere in the world you choose so long as it is outside of Japan. That is my one condition. You leave Japan and never return."

"I'm a little confused." Kenji shook his head. "What is this about?"

"I think I've been clear," Asami said.

"Is—is this guilt money? You _did_ kill Jiro."

"No. I didn't."

There was something direct in Asami's voice and eyes that made Kenji believe him.

"Then why?"

Asami almost laughed. Why? He didn't even know himself. Because the kid who had dumped him had asked him to? Only a fool would believe that.

"You don't need to know why," he said. "Either take my offer or stay here. It's not a complex decision, but it has a time limit of…" He glanced at his watch. "…about fifteen minutes."

"You're serious?"

"Or maybe you would prefer to stay here." Asami glanced meaningfully around the small room. "As I remember, your tastes ran to this kind of kink."

"And yours didn't?" Kenji laughed again. "As _I_ remember, we had a similar arrangement."

"You made your own choices all along."

Kenji frowned.

"You really are a cold bastard." He got up and crossed the room, his back to Asami. "Someday, you'll run up against someone who won't let you have everything your way. What will you do then?"

A muscle in Asami's jaw jumped.

"Well," Kenji said, turning. "I won't be around to see it happen, will I? I'm leaving Japan. How soon did you say?"

Funny how unfunny these almost karmic bits of irony were turning out to be, the fact that Kenji was witnessing the very moment he had predicted only he didn't know it. If he had, he would probably think it was hilarious. It made Asami want to smash his fist through the wall.

"Two o'clock tomorrow afternoon," he said and turned to the door.

"I guess I should thank you at least," Kenji called after him.

" _Don't_." Almost savagely. "I'm not doing it for you."

Outside, Suoh waited by the car, holding the door. Asami climbed in next to Kirishima.

"Go ahead with the funds transfer to Takakura," he said. "And tomorrow afternoon, Sagawa Kenji will come to Sion Corp. to pick up his payment and airline ticket. One of our men is to accompany him to the airport and stay with him until he is on whichever plane he chooses. I don't want to see him. I don't want to hear anything about it. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Hand me my briefcase."

Kirishima did as he was told. There was the sense that they were coming to the end of something at last.

Asami pulled a small stack files—the x-files—out of the briefcase and began to flip through them. He sorted them into a particular order and handed them back to Kirishima.

"Start with the ones in Tokyo."

The file on top was marked with the name of a fairly well-known actress who, Kirishima remembered, always had a tiny dog in her purse that would snap at him when she handed it over to be walked. He'd hated that dog and had silently rejoiced when that fling fizzled. He glanced from the file to Asami and asked a question he had never before asked his boss.

"Er, what am I supposed to do?"

"Contact them," Asami said. "Make sure they are…" What? Happy? Well? Not confined against their will in a whorehouse? What exactly did he think he was doing? "Make sure they're stable. Find out if they need anything. Money, jobs, you get the idea."

"On your behalf?" Kirishima asked.

"No. Make it low-key, inconspicuous. Keep my name out of it if you can."

Whatever Kirishima felt about it, it didn't show on his face, but Asami could feel the questions radiating from him. Or rather, one question, the same one he was asking himself: Why?

 _Because you can_ came the answer in a soft, sweet voice he couldn't forget. But there was no promise of return. So much of his life had been dedicated to a clear goal, and on that path, no action was taken that did not yield benefits. Now, aside from his money and his power, what did he have to show for it other than a handful of files on people even his secretary was reluctant to deal with?

What had he been doing? And yes…why?

###

Akihito was having trouble sleeping. He'd been at the guest house for three days now. Fei Long had put him up in a room of his own, and he'd spent the days talking with the boys through their teacher and waiting for Fei Long to make promised arrangements, knowing Fei Long was hoping he would change his mind.

As distractions went, the boys were a pretty good ploy. He was surprised at how easy it was to be with them. At first, he had been afraid that seeing them, talking with them would make all of the nightmares too real, too present, but the boys themselves were his guide. They were moving forward—most of them with far less to build on than he had, but they were finding a way.

And so it wasn't nightmares that kept him up now but that same anxious urge that had driven him to Hong Kong in the first place, that need to do something, to make something of what had happened—the way the other boys were doing.

Frustrated, he crawled out of bed and opened the laptop Fei Long had loaned him, thinking he would edit the photos he'd taken that day. There wasn't much he could do without proper software, but he could at least organize them.

The boys had been leery of his camera at first. The brothel owner had taken photos of them—disgusting photos—to use as advertisement. But Akihito let them decide how they wanted to pose—if they wanted to and had let them see the photos and tell him whether or not he could keep them. Now looking at the photos organized across the screen, he could see a progression. From shame to self-consciously stiff to a kind of determined pride. Today's pictures, though, they had forgotten about the camera and how they felt about it altogether, and Akihito had the kinds of shots he loved best. It was hard to describe but it was as though the camera had turned from a threat or even a tool to a soft and gentle light. What he didn't know was that it was his own heart that made it so.

But as he flicked through the photos, he knew that he had something. It made his pulse pick up and a warm rush of pleasure wash over him. Not like the adrenaline rush of an investigation. No, this was deeper and more personal. There was something here, something important. He just had to figure out what to do with it.

He needed people to see what he saw and to do that—if the boys agreed—he needed these photos published. If he could do that and do it right, the photos had the potential to have an impact greater than anything he could have done by going back to those brothels. His father knew the editors of the best magazines and publishers. Akihito didn't want to rely on his name again, but connections were the best ways to get things done. And he had his own connections, earned through his own efforts.

He reached for his phone and almost made the call before he realized it was two in the morning. Laughing at himself, he sent a text instead.

 _Ai-chan, you've been looking for a platform, a cause you could get behind and help promote. I think I have something for you. Call me ASAP. Aki_

He crawled back into the bed and rolled himself up in a cocoon of blankets, too excited now to sleep, heart throbbing, his mind turning over and over with plans and ideas. In his heart, he couldn't take the credit for saving those boys, no matter what Fei Long said, but in the end, they could end up saving him. He only wished…

Too restless, he rolled again, kicking at the blankets. He was still gripping his phone and held it in front of his face. But it was silent, dead. No missed calls, no unanswered texts this time. No one had come bursting through the doors to claim him and make all of his decisions for him. Maybe it was really over. Wasn't that what he wanted?

* * *

 **A/N:** Thank you for the thoughtful reviews! They are much appreciated! Next chapter will be the payoff at last! Thank you so much for staying with me on this story! Patience will be rewarded, I promise!


	18. Chapter 18

**A/N:** Once again, I am so sorry to have kept you waiting. This thing went off in a weird direction again. And then I promised one more chapter, but I couldn't fit it all into one and—well—I'm a sucker for a cliffhanger. But here's what I did. I waited until I had both chapters finished so I'm going to post one tonight and the next tomorrow night so you won't have to wait forever. Thank you again for your patience and for reading! More notes at the end.

 **Chapter 18**

 **Eight Months Later**

Grand Ballroom of the Imperial Plaza Hotel, Tokyo

"Takaba Akihito's work brings a sensitive perspective to an underexplored aspect of an unfortunately common subject. Avoiding the cliché of beatification, Takaba-sensei simultaneously manages to side-step the trap of portraying his subjects as victims. Rather, his gently unflinching eye presents them as fully human, possessing of a present that is both independent of and indelibly altered by their shared dark past. It is both a call to arms and a testament to the power of the human spirit. And so, ladies and gentlemen, for his series entitled 'Ten,' it is my privilege to present this year's Henko Award for Outstanding Achievement in Photojournalism to Takaba Akihito!"

The audience erupted into applause. Akihito got to his feet, hoping his legs wouldn't fold up under him. Across the table, his parents were smiling and clapping. Next to him, Momohara Ai popped excitedly out of her seat and gave him an enthusiastic kiss on the cheek. She had come as his date and in her role as sponsor and promoter of his project and as he had hoped, had diverted most of the attention that evening away from him. Until now. Now he could feel every eye in the room follow him as he made his way to the stage, unable to stop himself from smiling idiotically and accepted the award, an abstract piece of crystal unexpectedly heavy in hand.

"Whoa," Akihito said, stepping up to the microphone. "You could knock someone out with this."

He reached into the pocket of his tux for his notes, unfolded them with trembling hands and then folded them back up again and laughed a little.

"Ah, I had this speech all written out, but I'm shaking too hard to read it, so I'm just going to wing this. Okay, deep breath."

The stage lights mercifully blanked out most of the audience for him, so that he could not see faces staring up at him, watching him. Up until that moment, he hadn't planned such a public disrobing, but it felt like it had been drawn from him by an unseen hand.

"One year ago, I was one of thirteen young men pulled out of a sexual slavery ring in Dongguan."

He took another long, steadying breath, waited for the gasps to die down.

"I was lucky," he said. "I had…friends to help me and family to support me. Of the twelve boys rescued along with me, only two had families to return to. The remaining ten were either homeless or had been sold by their own parents. To those who—who bought them, they were disposable property and were treated as something less than human. To those who had failed them, there was no going back."

 _You are nothing_. It had the power to take him still, from time to time. He closed his eyes and let it wash over him because he knew now that it wasn't true—not of him, not of those other boys. His voice grew stronger as he went on.

"The hard truth is that for every one of those ten, there are tens of thousands more who deserve not only freedom but to reclaim the humanity that was taken from them. And so my thanks to the National Association of Photojournalism is not for myself but for helping to shine a bright light in this very dark corner. And a debt I can never repay to those ten young men for reminding me what true worth really is. Thank you."

He felt as though he had spent all of his breath on those words and had to hastily suck in air to keep from passing out right there in front of an army of photographers. With a hasty bow, he nearly bolted off the stage.

His mother met him first and laid a hand along the side of his face. Without giving up every detail, he had told his parents the basics of what had happened in Dongguan and why he had taken on this project. It had been hard to let them in on that pain and horror and he hated to see it now, gathered in the corners of his mother's eyes.

"You are the strongest person I know," she said.

Smiling, he took her hand and kissed it. He reached past her and handed his award to his father.

"Put this next to yours," he said. "A little payback for everything I put you through."

Then Ai slipped her arm through his and he was drawn into the crowd and later to a party Ai threw for him at a trendy club. Kou, Takato, Yoshida and all his friends were there, Kou panting wide-eyed and practically drooling over Ai. As usual, it was Takato who noticed what the others didn't see when Akihito only laughed and pushed Kou harder towards Ai.

"So you don't mind?" Takato asked as they watched Ai and Kou dance.

Akihito shrugged.

"He likes the clingy type. They're made for each other."

"They'd be a disaster together. Besides, she likes you." Takato leaned across the table, that annoyingly penetrating gaze fixed on Akihito. "But you're not interested, are you?"

"I'm not interested in being targeted by her fanboys again," Akihito laughed.

"Nah, it's more than that." Takato shook his head. "There's someone else."

Akihito took a long draw on his beer and swallowed it hard.

"No," he said. "There's no one."

 _Only you…_

It was close to three in the morning and the party was still raging when he managed to slip away and flag down a taxi. He was a little drunk and on the slightly hysterical edge between exhilaration and exhaustion when the taxi pulled up in front of the quirky old apartment building in Shimokitazawa where he now lived. Without counting, he tumbled a handful of notes at the driver, dug out his keys and let himself into the building. There was no concierge here to smirk at him and only one ancient, shabby elevator that took forever to lift him to the ninth floor, as close as he was going to get to a penthouse of his own.

Inside, his apartment was dark and he didn't bother turning on any lights, since his plan was to kick off his shoes and fall straight into bed. He made a little detour to the kitchen for a bottle of water, twisted off the top and drank it, standing in the faint glow of light from the little fridge.

"You look good in a tux."

A voice like black velvet. Akihito spun around, choking and spluttering water down his front. There he sat, darkness melting into the dark, the man himself, his arms stretched along the top of the sofa as if he owned the place.

"Thanks. It's rented." Akihito shook himself, anger dragging him out of stunned stupidity. "Asami, what the hell! You can't just come busting in here. I mean, I know you think you can because the rules never apply to you but—"

He stopped, bit down on the flood of words, his teeth grinding. He'd moved into this place three months ago and for the first month, he'd expected this every single time he walked through the door, Asami lying in wait like the jungle cat he was. But it hadn't happened, and he began to believe it never would and the resulting tumult of contradictory and painful feelings had wrecked his sleep for weeks. After three months, he had accepted that the impossible had happened and Asami had finally let him go, and he had slowly begun to piece together a life around that void. Now here the man was, deep-voice, mocking eyes, smirk and all, as though nothing had changed.

"Relax." Asami rose, a shadow moving across the room in elegant lineation. "This isn't like that other time I came to your apartment."

That was at three in the morning, too, some ridiculous excuse about the rain…

"You've made yourself clear," Asami said, his voice tight with some curbed emotion. "Eight months and only one impersonal contact from you in all that time."

Akihito felt heat rise in his face and a swirl of excuses and justifications he couldn't put to words. It came down simply to the fact that he had been afraid, that if he made one move, he would be right back where he had started, lost again. There was more, a galling sense that he had given up his right to casually reach out to the other man. It had been his choice to run, his decision to end it, no matter how much it hurt. One thing, though, he had been compelled to do. Four months ago, he had sent Asami a copy of the results of his final HIV test.

"I thought you needed to see that," he said quietly.

"I did," Asami said, "and I'm grateful."

He had stopped a few feet distant, not his usual trick of drawing so near that Akihito was forced to look up at him, towering, large enough to block out everything else.

"I wanted you to know you wouldn't get sick because of me," Akihito said.

Asami frowned.

"I was glad to know that _you_ were all right," he said. "In any case, I haven't come to…pester you. I wanted to give you something and this seemed an appropriate occasion."

Was there something missing from his voice? That dusky undertone that slipped depraved promises beneath innocuous words? Akihito frowned.

"Fei Long just sent flowers," he said. "He didn't break into my house and scare the shit out of me."

"Fei Long doesn't have my sense of style, and my gift is not the sort that could be entrusted to a deliveryman."

Asami turned and walked back to the living room. Akihito followed him, like an unwillingly curious kitten, peering through the gloom while Asami retrieved something from the coffee table, turned and held it out.

"Go on, take it," he said when Akihito only stared. "I promise there is no sinister motive, no deception."

Akihito took the package, a large accordion file made of brown leather, closed with a brass clasp. He flicked on a table lamp and soft light filled the room.

"Your hair grew out," Asami said suddenly.

Akihito blushed and reached a hand to the back of his neck, where his hair fell past his collar.

"Ah, yeah," he said. "It's too long, I guess."

He had a surprisingly hard time letting anyone cut it and put it off as long as he could stand it. It was one of the more minor ways in which the past still troubled him.

"It looks good on you," Asami said, smiling.

Suddenly shy, Akihito ducked his head and focused on opening the clasp and turning back the flap of the file. Inside were a number of manila folders. He glanced up, questioningly.

"Take them out," Asami said. "Read them."

He did as he was told. Inside the top folder was a photo of a beautiful man with dark hair and wild black eyes. Stapled to the photo was a dossier that identified him as Sagawa Kenji and detailed when and where he had been found, how much it had cost to settle his debts and free him and a copy of an airline ticket for a flight that had taken him to Los Angeles. A lingering ache tightened around Akihito's heart and then suddenly released. He looked up.

"You found him."

Asami nodded, busying himself with shaking a cigarette out of a pack. There was a note of gratitude, of sincere gladness to the boy's voice that shamed Asami, who had felt only distaste and resentment for his task.

"You told me to." He stopped with the cigarette halfway to his lips. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

Akihito was about to say "go ahead" when he was seized with a premonition, the smell of expensive tobacco haunting the apartment like a painful memory long after Asami had gone and so he said "Yeah, I kind of do."

Asami smiled and returned the cigarette to the pack.

"What are the rest of these?" Akihito asked to hide his confusion. In the second file was another photo, this one of a woman but with a black bar across her eyes and her name blacked out on her attending dossier. There were six more, mostly male, all with the identities censored but with current locations, financial, employment and social situations noted. Akihito looked up again. "These were all your…lovers?"

"Yes," Asami said matter-of-factly. "All accounted for; all reasonably content."

He watched Akihito flip back through the files, could practically hear him mentally counting.

"That's all of them?"

"Since I started keeping track." Asami cocked an eyebrow. "What were you expecting? More? Less?"

More, Akihito thought, now that he was forced to think about it at all. A lot more, actually. Was there a file like this on him? He was almost sure there was. Kirishima would have seen to it. It would note his current address, his job and probably his bank account balance. Takaba Akihito: abducted, bedded, changed beyond measure, now reasonably content. He was, wasn't he?

He slipped the folders back into the file and held it out to Asami.

"Thank you—for finding him. For telling me."

It might not lay Sagawa's ghost completely but it would stop some of the chains rattling through his dreams.

"Don't thank me," Asami said. "It's a very small portion of what I owe you."

"You've got that backward," Akihito said. "I'm the one in debt, remember?"

"You owe me nothing," Asami said, the words quick and hard. "You never have. The debt has been mine, from the start."

"What are you talking about?"

"I've always taken more than I've given," Asami said, smiling ruefully. "The secret to success is to make people believe it's the other way around."

That familiar little line of confusion and anger appeared between Akihito's brows.

"What are you saying?"

"It worked with you—for a while," Asami said. "Until you had to kill for me."

The jolt of his words widened Akihito's eyes and paled his face with a flash of memory, Sagawa straddling Asami, the jarring kick of a pistol, the jerk of Sagawa's body as the bullet hit, the blood and the sure knowledge that if he had it to do over, he would do nothing differently.

"Th-that was to save you." He took a breath and lifted his chin. "I'd do it again."

That struck hard, shaking Asami so profoundly that he had to fight to keep the blow from registering on his face. His voice, when it came out, was quietly strangled.

"Yes," he said. "I know."

Now he stepped close and looked down on Akihito, not threatening or intimidating but bowed before a brightness that had blinded him from the moment they met. In his lust to possess, he had nearly destroyed that fire, but Akihito had rekindled it on his own. To reach for him again, to drag that light back towards the dark would be a crime that would damn him even more surely than the catalog of sins he had already violated.

"You have always been a better man than I, Akihito," he said. "That's why I wanted you, didn't you know?"

Akihito stared up at the face he had never been able to completely read, that had kept so much hidden from him.

"What?"

"I want to believe," Asami said, "that someone can win—against someone like me. Show me, Akihito. Like you always said you would."

"You're talking crazy," he said.

A corner of Asami's mouth tilted upward. He took the file from Akihito and tucked it under his arm.

"Perhaps."

He smiled fully then and raised his hand, the backs of his fingers whispering along Akihito's cheek. Akihito felt the brush of every nerve like a thousand sparks igniting and knew that he would go up like dry tinder if he let himself go. He saw it flare in Asami's eyes, too, and then—for the first time since they'd met—Asami could not hold his gaze and looked away.

"This was a mistake," Asami said quietly, almost to himself. "I thought I could see you again and not—I shouldn't have come."

"Asami—"

"Forgive me."

There was a note of finality to his voice that drifted over them both like a heavy fog. Akihito knew down to the soles of his feet that this was it at last, that when Asami walked out that door, he would never see him again. He had managed to rebuild his life, had weathered and not gone under to the tidal wave of Asami. It would be crazy to willingly drown himself now. Completely insane…

He reached out and grabbed Asami by the wrist.

"Don't go."

.

* * *

 **A/N:** I made up the Henko Award. I wanted it to feel like something big and important but maybe not quite as big and important as a Pulitzer. But still, it's a big deal, what Akihito has achieved.

I wish there was an easier way to respond to guest reviews, but I wanted to thank everyone who has left me such lovely comments. They mean so very much and keep me going. And E. Von, thank you for loving Dr. Nagato! I love her, too!

Thank you, thank you for reading! One more chapter tomorrow as promised and then a lovely epilogue. I love epilogues almost as much as I love cliffhangers.


	19. Chapter 19

**A/N:** As promised, the last chapter! To be followed by an epilogue in a few days because I love to tie things up with pretty bows and ribbons. I love your reviews and thoughtful comments. Thank you!

 **Chapter 19**

"Dammit, Asami!" Akihito spluttered, stamping his foot, his hand clamped tight around Asami's wrist. "You come here all handsome and—and—you tell me it's all a mistake and then you walk back out. I just got done changing all the locks and you kick the door in and then say you shouldn't have done it. Well, you're here now and what are you going to do about it?"

Asami covered his surprise with another flippant smile.

"I will pay to have the locks replaced, of course."

"That's not funny!"

The smile stiffened.

"You're right. There's nothing funny about this." Asami gently began to pry Akihito's fingers from his arm. "Let go, Akihito."

But Akihito grabbed Asami's other hand.

"No!" he shouted. "You want me to _win_? What do you think winning looks like? Me, alone here in this place? Me, at a party where everyone thinks I'm the greatest thing since cup noodles and all I can think about is you? Me, not being able to sleep at night because there isn't some great big overheated jerk sleeping next to me? What did I win, Asami?"

Asami's eyes narrowed.

"Your freedom," he said.

"Bullshit." Akihito let go of Asami's hands with a hard shove. "You said it yourself. You hold my freedom in the palm of your hand."

"I release you, as of today."

"Is that how that works? It's that easy?" Akihito snorted. "You release me, like my jail term is up? Like I haven't tried to forget you all this time."

Asami moved in again, looming this time, his eyes dark.

"You're the one who ran," he growled. "If that's how you feel, then why didn't you call me? Not once, in eight months…"

Shame burned across Akihito's face.

"I didn't think I had the right," he mumbled, looking down. "I—I hurt you too much."

"Do you understand, then?" Asami said, his voice ragged. "You come back and you run and I wait for you to do it all over again. I can't do this again. I'm not made of stone."

Akihito felt the air between them thicken, like a physical thing keeping them apart. The burning regret for the wounds he had inflicted tangled around righteous anger for his own pain and a persistent fear of everything this man represented—the bad and the good—and kept his eyes on the toes of Asami's socks, his heart keening against his ribs.

"Then why did you come here?" he breathed. "So you could have Kirishima write up a nice little report on me, stick me in a folder and file me away and be done with me?"

"Akihito—"

"You really suck at letting people go, you know that?"

He waited but there was no retort, no answering quip. Just a sigh as Asami moved towards the exit.

"No!"

Akihito made his own move, darting in front of Asami, forcing him back, hands splayed flat on his chest.

"Okay, I ran away. I was scared."

He squeezed his eyes tight and bit his lip. If there ever was a time to open the door and let out the truth—no matter how vulnerable it made him, this was it.

"You've always scared me," he said. "Not just the shit that happens to me when I'm around you but how you suck everything up like a black hole in an Italian suit. I couldn't feel the ground under my feet and sometimes I couldn't even remember my own name."

"All good reasons to step aside." Asami's voice was flat and he spoke looking over Akihito's head towards the door.

"No, just listen to me!" Akihito's fingers curled around the lapels of Asami's coat. "Do you remember what you said to me at the very start? 'Remember this, the pain and the pleasure that I give you.'"

"Gods, Akihito—" Why couldn't he forget? Why couldn't they both forget?

"They go hand in hand, don't they?" Akihito looked up, that glow of terrible sweetness that was both drug and poison to Asami in his eyes. "For both of us."

The jolt of that flashed across Asami's face in darkening lines.

"I'm not the only one who's afraid, am I?" Akihito asked. "But you can't stay away from me anymore than I can forget you. So what are we going to do?"

"We're going to stop this, right now."

Asami moved to tear Akihito's hands from his coat, but Akihito was too quick. He reached up and put a hand on either side of Asami's face and with surprising strength, drew the other man to him.

"Because you say so?" Akihito murmured. "Maybe you don't have that kind of power, you ever think about that? Maybe it's time I take some of the control back."

He pressed his lips against Asami's, felt the muscles of his face tighten beneath his palms but no return of pressure from any other part of him. His lips gave way to Akihito's tongue but his jaw remained taut and gave no access.

"Dammit, Asami, kiss me."

Asami looked down at him, eyes too shadowed to read.

"Don't you understand?" His voice fell in broken pieces. "I don't want to hurt you anymore."

"You don't think this hurts me?"

Akihito pulled again and this time felt a yielding to his hands and when he took Asami's lips a second time, felt them move against his own, felt rather than heard a low moan as his tongue slipped between Asami's teeth, felt a hot breath driven from Asami into his own mouth. He drew back with a little gasp of his own. Leaning in again, he put his lips next to Asami's ear.

"Do it, Asami," he whispered. "Shoot the locks off the doors. Drag me away."

Asami's hands closed over his shoulders, gripping just hard enough to hurt, and pushed him to arm's length.

"Stop this!"

He gave Akihito a little shake with each word, but Akihito only laughed.

"Go on," he said. "I want you to."

Akihito was jerked off his feet, heart giddily disoriented, heart spinning crazily in his chest

"Not the couch!" he said breathlessly. "The bedroom's over there!"

And he was swept through the apartment and thrown onto the bed so hard, he bounced clear by half a meter before landing with a grunt, afraid the whole thing would collapse under him. Asami was on him like a predator, hands on Akihito's wrists, pinning him in place, fury marked in distinct lines between his brows.

"Do you really understand what you're doing?" he growled. "I won't let you go again."

Akihito's heart was doing something now that felt a little bit like backflips. He lifted his chin.

"Back at you," he said. "You're stuck with me. No way you're going to file me away with a black box across my eyes."

Fury shifted to something else, tugging Asami's reluctant mouth into an amused curve.

"No, you can't be so easily contained, can you?"

He wanted Akihito wild and he wanted him caged and that had never worked. Now here his boy was, not offering to be tamed but promising to keep the battle raging. Tame was the last thing either of them wanted. Asami let go of Akihito's wrists and roughly jerked his tuxedo jacket over his shoulders and tossed it on the floor.

Akihito sat up and with both hands, shoved Asami back onto his heels. He had promised to take on some of the control and that could start right now. He reached for Asami's tie and pulled it loose. Asami smiled, accepting the challenge and their hands tangled, working buttons and studs and belts, until they were both naked, breath quickening in their chests. Their hands fell and they knelt inches apart, without touching. Akihito felt a tremble work its way through him, not of cold but of dormant longing. He was sure Asami could feel it shiver the air between them. If something didn't happen, it would shake him apart. He swayed.

"Touch me."

Asami's brows lowered over his dangerous eyes.

"At your command?"

Akihito shook his head, lower lip caught in his teeth.

"It's what you want?" And now one eyebrow arced in elegant warning.

Akihito nodded.

"I won't stop."

"Ever?"

Akihito could barely get the word out, but it earned him a deep throaty laugh and a familiar response.

"As you wish."

Asami hesitated a moment, keeping that pulsing space between them, his eyes traveling over the smooth planes of Akihito's chest as if feeling by sight, tasting by vision, savoring what was not yet on his tongue until Akihito thought he would scream with the waiting. And then Asami's hands drifted along the lines of his neck and settled onto his shoulders, and Akihito's lips parted on an inrush of air.

"Those words have ruled me since we met," Asami said as he drew his hands down over Akihito's chest, "and you never noticed, did you?"

"Y-you're crazy," Akihito said. There was more—there was something else he wanted to say but words fled before the feel of Asami's fingers trailing over his skin.

"For you," Asami agreed and slipped his hands across Akihito's hips, sliding to follow the swell of his ass cheeks.

 _Insane_ , Akihito thought, arcing into the heat that spread from Asami's hands, his own hands clutching at the breadth of Asami's shoulders. _I'm the one who's going insane_. Willingly drowning, was that what it was? He couldn't think…

It had been like this from the first time Asami had touched him. The feel of Asami's hand on his bare skin lifted him to a place where the only thing that was real was what was given to him by Asami. The bastard had said as much once before, but it was true. Every inch of his skin existed in this place only for Asami, came to life only under Asami's hands, nerve endings that had no prior purpose awoke when pressed against Asami's body. The intense intimacy of mere skin had been a revelation. For twenty-three years, he hadn't even suspected this beautiful thing he possessed until Asami showed him with hands and lips and tongue and the burning expanse of his own body.

Those hands moved now up the coiled muscles of his back, uncoiling them at a touch so that Akihito bent to Asami like fine wire to a magnet. Fingers splayed, Asami's hands stroked down Akihito's torso in wide swaths, as though he couldn't touch enough at once. At last, they flowed up the slender tendons of Akihito's neck, strong fingers pushing up into the long strands of hair that fell over his nape, thumbs under his jaw lifting Akihito's face so that their eyes met, and Asami's heart stumbled. Eyes glistening, wide and dark with want, that Akihito could still look at him with such openness, guilelessly sweet in his need. It took every bit of restraint to keep from fisting his hands in the boy's hair, holding on in fear that he would slip away again, his own need pounding in his chest like a war drum.

To cover—to keep from saying something beyond crazy, he bent and closed his mouth over Akihito's soft lips. Akihito tilted his head, shifting the angle, inviting Asami deeper. When Akihito's tongue darted into Asami's mouth, touched against his own and slid around it, it was like a match to gunpowder, sending a thick thread of fire through every vein. Asami pressed quick, hungry kisses across the line of Akihito's jaw to his neck, feeling the rapid rush of the boy's pulse against his lips, the frantic beat of his desire.

Akihito swayed again in Asami's hands, dizzy with touch and kisses and shallow breathing, blood thrumming in his ears. Too long! It had been too long since he had felt this way. He bent and pressed his lips against the smooth skin below Asami's collarbone and ran his tongue along the little valley, a faint taste of salt and an involuntary shift of muscle that sent a ripple of satisfaction through him. He was not the only one swimming these waters. He sank lower, a line of kisses down Asami's chest and stomach, setting off a series of intricate, uncontrolled little spasms under his lips until he reached the line of black hair below Asami's navel and felt Asami's hands slide over the top of his head and take hold of his hair, whether in arrest or command, he didn't care.

Below his chin, Asami's cock stood fully hard. Akihito dipped toward it and licked the tip, a different taste of salt and the minute contraction of Asami's fingers in his hair. Wanting more than that, he traced the curving edge of the head and ran his tongue down the thick vein that travelled the length and back up, taking the head into his mouth and letting his lips sink slowly, slowly over hot silken skin. This was his, this hardness he had created. The thought shot through him, a surge of power and strange endearment. He drew back along the length, sucking, and was rewarded with a low moan that sent an answering ache to his own groin. He sank and rose again and again, and each time Asami's voice came so low, so resonant, Akihito felt it in a bass tremor against his lips.

He lifted his head and smiled into an expression he knew well: promise, threat, warning all in one. He was done for and wanted to laugh out loud.

He was pushed onto his back, Asami moving over him, nothing between them now but the friction of their own bodies. Asami's broad thigh parted his legs, and his hand reached down, caressing, fingers exploring, finding the tight ring of muscle that flexed in anticipation.

"You want this?" Asami's breath was hot in his ear.

"Can't you tell?" Akihito said.

Asami's fingertip circled maddeningly, drawing Akihito's hips to gyrate helplessly in imitation.

"I don't—ah!—have any lube—" Akihito gasped.

Asami's weight shifted, bedsprings creaking as he rose to pick up his coat and retrieve something from the breast pocket. Propped on an elbow, Akihito craned to see a small bottle in his hand.

"Are you kidding me?"

Another eloquent eyebrow arch.

"You don't rise to my level in life without being prepared for any eventuality." The bottle opened with a pop. "Now spread."

Gods help him, he was weak to that voice. He fell back, legs splayed in shamefully shameless obedience, welcoming the heft of Asami between them, the perverse foreignness of the cold lube and Asami's finger sliding into him. He fought not to gasp, not to give up so very much ground so very easily but could not keep it in. He wanted it, oh gods, so much. He could feel himself greedy, sucking, drawing, wanting to hold on.

"Slow down," Asami whispered mockingly while his finger drove forward in steady rhythm.

A dart of fury shook Akihito and catching Asami off-balance, he flipped him, changing their positions. He knew well that he only took what Asami allowed and yet, it speared him, what Asami was willing to give, lying beneath him, eyes following him with ravening focus. Shame, submission, obedience, none of them had a place here. The battle between them had always been this, to find a level, a ground where they both could stand.

Knees straddling Asami's hips, he bent and took Asami's face between his hands and looked into those amber eyes, close enough to feel each quick, hot exhale mingle with his own. Asami's sleek black hair had come loose and fell rakishly across his forehead. It never would stay completely tamed, never completely yielding to his control. Akihito reached out with reverent fingers and brushed the strands back. Asami cocked his head and looked at him, perplexed.

"Have you changed your mind?" he asked.

Akihito smiled and shook his head.

"Oh, no."

He straightened then and reached back to spread himself, lowering against the head of Asami's cock.

 _I love him_ , he thought as he felt Asami's hands slide along his thighs. _I love him, but he can't control me_. Somehow, though, it would be all right. The ground might shift under them, but they would find that level.

There was peace and power in the thought as he eased down, taking Asami inside of himself, past the breath-stealing first piercing, the oppressive fullness that threatened to push out everything else, until that moment where his body gave in and accepted what was wrong to be right.

Palms braced on Asami's chest, Akihito arched into it, lifting slightly and then sliding down, and again and again, taking a little more each time until his skin was flush against the heat of Asami's groin and he was filled. This…this was always the moment, entered fully, feeling the coursing of blood in Asami's member buried deep inside him and his own blood rushing to meet it, their pulses matching so that he could not tell one beat from the other. He lifted his hips again, curving slightly to change the angle and heard Asami chuckle, sending a flush of self-consciousness from his groin to his neck.

"Go on," Asami said. "Whatever you want. You know what feels good."

He did. So good. What he wanted. His thoughts came in broken fragments like that as he rode Asami's shaft, slick and hard, pressing and not quite releasing until he felt he was breaking into pieces himself. Eyes closed, he tipped his head back, closed out everything but the feel of thick heat pushing—into him—pushing—pushing him towards an edge that raced to meet him and he cried in warning.

"Ah, Asami!"

Asami sat up suddenly, one arm around Akihito's waist and with a practiced movement, swung them around until they were reversed again, pulling Akihito back from the edge and held under him—not pinned but cossetted in his hands. His cock withdrew and slid back into Akihito in one long, fluid thrust, urging him forward once again and driving another of those lovely, wordless cries from him, all the sweeter for the quicksilver nature of that voice, of the boy himself.

 _I lied. You aren't mine,_ he thought. _I have always been yours_.

Bending, he slid one hand under Akihito, smoothing down the lean muscles of his back. He loved this little body, fine-boned and lithe, built to fit to him. The long legs made for sprinting lifted and wrapped around his hips as Akihito pulled himself into the next thrust.

Asami thrust again, the push and withdrawal beginning to set up that insistent ache that needed to be inside of Akihito, that needed to move, that needed what could only be in that moment, held for just that second. Akihito cried again and Asami felt the little contractions of the muscle that tightened around him and could not get deep enough, could not feel enough. Each stroke now pulled him a little farther beyond control, dragging him under like a chained anchor he had cast overboard himself. He clasped the boy beneath him as though he was a lifeline.

"Tell me how it feels, Akhito!"

Akihito had given up any effort to command himself and let out a helpless gasp of tormented pleasure with every pump and roll of Asami's hips, his own erection pressed and drawn against the hard muscles of Asami's stomach lighting little flashes along the edge of his vision. He couldn't answer, couldn't think…

Asami's arms came around him fully, crushing their bodies together, crushing air and admissions from Akihito.

"Tell me!"

"Ah!" Akihito wrapped his arms around Asami's shoulders, his face buried in the heat and sweat of Asami's neck. "Like you're part of me. It f-feels like you're part of me!"

Asami exhaled, his breath coursing soft and warm down Akihito's back.

"That's right. Take me, Akihito."

Asami thrust again, hard, jarring the flashes into sparks and shattering Akihito's thoughts so that he only dimly remembered later thinking that it had been a sigh, like relief, that he had never heard Asami's voice sound so relieved.

But another deep stroke and there were no thoughts at all, just a different kind of relief, of plunging through space, clutching Asami like there was nothing else to hold onto in this world, his hips jerking as his climax shot, hot and wet between them. Asami's hands grasped his shoulders and he was pulled hard onto Asami's cock in short, sharp thrusts, feeling Asami's seed jet inside of him, his name spilling from Asami's lips and nothing—nothing else.

###

It was still dark when Akihito moved at last, turning languidly onto his back to see Asami stretched beside him, head propped on his hand, looking thoughtfully down at him, hair once again in mutiny on his forehead. Akihito reached up and mussed it further. He kind of liked it that way. He began to smile but moaned as he felt the proof of what they had done leaking out of him and made a move to push himself up.

"No, don't." Asami put a hand on his chest. "Let me."

He got up and went to the bathroom, coming back with a towel, the light from the hall picking out the beautiful lines of his body in soft gold. Asami was never uncomfortable or self-conscious naked. Why should he be? Akihito turned onto his side to fully appreciate him as he walked across the room.

But something caught Asami's attention and he bent and fished it off the floor and held it up, a bit of black silk, about forty centimeters long, wider at the ends.

"A real bow tie?" he asked.

"Of course," Akihito said. "You think I didn't learn anything from you?"

"Who tied it for you?" with a malicious little edge.

"I tied it myself!" Akihito snapped. "I watched a video on the internet! Who do you think did it?"

That raised a low chuckle from Asami, who sauntered to the bed, the tie dangling from his fingers, obviously enjoying himself.

"Good point," he said, "I didn't think that pretty little idol you spend so much time with would know how to do it."

"Don't even try to tell me you're jealous of Ai!"

Akihito glared, his eyebrows forming a hard line until he saw that telltale smirk and couldn't help himself and fell forward, laughing. He stopped laughing at the sight of his suit, in a black heap on the floor.

"Oh man!" he moaned, pushing himself up again. "Look at the tux! I have to return it tomorrow."

"I'll pay for the damages." Asami kicked aside the crumpled mess and knelt by the bed next to Akihito. "In fact, I'll buy you your own, one that will fit properly." Asami looked mockingly into the eyes glaring at him. "How would you like that?"

"Like hell you will!"

"I know. You can take care of yourself now, right?" He tenderly wiped the towel over Akihito's chest and between his legs. "Just remember, you don't always have to do it alone."

"But—"

Asami silenced him with a kiss.

"In the vast history of humanity," he said softly, "the one truth is that we need each other. It is no kind of life to stand alone."

Akihito stretched out his hand and laid it along the side of Asami's face, skin like warm silk under his fingers.

"A-and you'll let me be that for you, too?" he asked.

Asami leaned into the palm of Akihito's hand.

"You already are."

Akihito's sweet mouth curved into a drowsy smile.

"Then we both win," he said.

He was taken into Asami's arms and the slow, exquisite assault of kisses, nips and languorously ravening licks began at his ear and promised a thorough conquest of his entire body before dawn. Akihito, floating on a wave of hazy pleasure, faintly heard a voice somewhere in a forgotten part of his brain.

 _In the end, the one you'll want_ …This. This was what he wanted.


	20. Chapter 20

**Epilogue**

The first thing Akihito saw when he stepped off the jetway was Suoh, towering over everyone else, holding a cardboard placard that read _Takaba Akihito-sensei_ and looking as stoic as usual. Akihito rolled his eyes. Some things never changed. He hefted his carryon over his shoulder and stomped over to the man.

"Did he make you hold that?" he asked, craning his neck to look up at Suoh.

"I don't know what you mean, Takaba-sensei."

"Oh yes you do." Akihito sighed at the impassive human wall in front of him. "I hope he pays you well."

"I'm not at liberty to discuss the terms of my employment, Takaba-sensei."

"And you can knock off that sensei stuff, too!"

"Yes, Takaba-sama."

Akihito clapped a hand to his forehead. He had learned to recognize a brick wall when he ran into one head first.

"Okay, go back to Takaba-sensei," he grumbled. "And give me that." He snatched the sign out of Suoh's hands.

Outside the terminal, the limo was parked along the curb. Akihito got to it before Suoh could catch up to him, flung open the passenger door and waved the sign in Asami's face.

"You are a sick, sadistic man!"

Asami smiled.

"I've missed you, too. Now come here."

The sign was whisked out of Akihito's fingers and tossed aside, and Akihito was whisked off his feet and onto Asami's lap, the door closed behind him. Suoh climbed into the car, and by the time they had pulled out into traffic, Akihito had been completely melted by Asami's marauding kiss.

"Ah, Asami!" He took a desperate gulp of air. "I've been travelling for two days! I'm all sweaty and disgusting."

"You're delicious."

Asami underscored the point by running his tongue from the base of Akihito's throat to his jaw, sending a slow tremble down Akihito's spine.

"Augh!" Akihito shook himself. "Can't you wait?!"

"It's been three weeks," Asami complained. "Can you?"

He slipped his hand between Akihito's legs, against the hard proof of Akihito's own eagerness.

"I can take care of that for you," he said with dark promise.

"Nnn!" Akihito moaned and tried to wriggle out of Asami's grasp. "I want it properly, not in the back of the limo with Suoh up front. After all that time, I can wait another hour until we get home."

It was a little word, home, but coming from those lips, it was cool water and warm nourishment. It took all of Asami's possessiveness and wrapped it in a willingly shared blanket. Home was another word for yes.

Akihito stopped, still straddling Asami's lap, caught by the intensity of Asami's expression. He put both hands on those broad shoulders and looked down, puzzled.

"What?"

But Asami only shook his head and said "How was Africa?"

Akihito smiled.

"Too far away."

He took Asami's face in his hands and bent and kissed him, long and deep. This time, it was Asami's turn to moan, and he captured Akihito's wrists and held him at bay.

"If you want to get home with your virtue intact," he said, "this isn't the way to go about it. Unless you've developed your own sadistic streak."

"Well, I've learned from the master." Akihito did his best impression of Asami's smirk.

"You're about a hun—"

"A hundred years too early, I know," Akihito finished for him and found himself lifted bodily and dumped onto the seat next to Asami.

"You don't get around me like that," Asami said. "Abstinence was your idea, so now you distract me. Show me what you've been up to. Let me see your beautiful brats."

The light that was peculiar to Akihito alone spread across the young man's face, and he dug eagerly into his backpack, pulled out a battered but still functional tablet and booted it up.

"These are just raws, okay?" he said apologetically, "I haven't had a chance to crop or anything, but look, most of them are just so beautiful, they don't need a lot of work. Here, these were taken at a school outside of Mombasa."

He began to flip through images, narrating in a familiar tumble of enthusiastic words. The photos were all of children. It had always been kids that interested him, that touched him the most. Something of their resilience and optimism matched his own. In the darkest places, they could find the light and in that, he had found his mission and his meaning. He would never have children of his own, so he poured all of that excess love and energy into his photos, his "beautiful brats," Asami called them.

"Wait a minute, what's this?"

Asami grabbed Akihito's forearm mid-swipe and pulled the sleeve of his jacket back to reveal a grimy bandage from his hand, halfway up his arm. Akihito cringed. He'd meant to ditch the bandage in the airport restroom and had forgotten all about it when he saw Suoh and that sign.

"It's nothing," he said.

"It's obviously something. What happened?"

"Nothing!" He knew that look of dark determination that had begun to gather on Asami's face and sighed. "Okay, just—the jeep rolled over when we were being cha—I mean, the jeep just rolled over."

"It 'just rolled over,' like that?" Asami turned Akihito's hand over in his, examining the bandage.

"It's only a sprain."

"We'll make a detour to the clinic and have Nagato check to be sure."

"Asami, no! It's fine, seriously. Don't make a big deal about it."

In the aftermath of all that had happened, this remained, this delicately balanced push and pull. It was still new territory for Asami, feeling out the limits of Akihito's tolerance.

"Next time," he said with a smile to blunt the seriousness of his intent, "I'm sending a guard with you."

"What?" Akihito twisted his arm out of Asami's grasp, wincing. "No way! They'd scare the kids!"

Asami took Akihito's chin between his thumb and forefinger.

"Then you must promise to be more careful."

Akihito tried to laugh it off. It had actually been pretty damned scary, but Asami didn't need to know that. It was way too easy to kick his overprotective side into hyper-drive.

"It's a calculated risk, right? The payoff is worth more than the risk. You taught me that."

"Hmm." Asami frowned. "That depends on whose equation you use."

"You don't have to worry." Akihito leaned into Asami's side, small but sturdy, wiry but warm. "I'll always come back to you. You know why?"

"Because you can never leave me?" Asami said, expecting to have his own words thrown back at him again.

"Hm mm." Akihito shook his head. "Because I want to be with you, and you know what a stubborn pain-in-the-ass I can be."

"I have experience of it, yes," Asami said. "Fortunately for you, I can give as good as I get on that pain in the ass issue."

He was rewarded with Akihito back in his lap, laughing and whispering in his ear, "Can you ask Suoh to drive faster?"

Warm breath and hot words shivered down his right side, and a feeling rose in Asami that he couldn't help picturing as something like a champagne fountain. He nipped Akihito's lips in retaliation for calling up such saccharine imagery.

 _I am losing my mind. No, I lost it some time ago._

But he pushed the intercom button with a steady hand.

"Step on it, Suoh."

###

Three weeks later, the champagne was real—if not a fountain, at least bottles of it to celebrate the opening of an exhibit of the new photos. Akihito had insisted on planning and financing the opening all on his own, though Asami had privately negotiated with the caterers to augment the liquor supply, knowing Akihito's idea of a celebration was to spring for Yebisu instead of Rich Malt.

The event was packed. Asami stood like a man in a very bad love song, gazing across a crowded room, watching the back of a bright head surrounded by admirers. Here, too, Asami had been prepared to pull strings to make sure it was well attended and had been amused and secretly proud that his interference was unnecessary. Akihito's photos were a draw on their own, and his little studio was cheerfully crammed with everyone from old friends like Kou and Takato to wealthy collectors and a few celebrities. Momohara Ai was there, of course, looking suddenly grown up in plunging satin, draped familiarly over Akihito's shoulder.

Akihito, too, no longer looked like a boy. When had that happened? There was no rented tux this time, but there was a wine colored silk shirt—negligently buttoned—and tight brown pants. Around his neck hung a gold rectangle engraved with the right angles and half circles of a viewfinder suspended from a thin gold chain, the only material gift of any worth he'd ever accepted from Asami. If only that damned girl…Wasn't it about time she went on a world tour? If she needed financial backing, he just might know someone who would help her out.

"You look as though you'd like to bite someone."

Asami turned to find that Dr. Nagato had made her way through the crush to his side and was smiling up at him, knowingly, tauntingly.

Asami bowed.

"Are you offering?"

Nagato was surprised for only a moment. "If I was twenty years younger."

"Nonsense," Asami said. "The only real obstacle is the fact that I'm not single."

"Yes," Nagato sighed. "It's pretty obvious your head is in the noose, and I have to say it suits you. Dammit."

"Anything worth doing is worth doing with style," Asami said.

Nagato smiled, following Asami's line of vision to the crowd surrounding Takaba. She remembered once wondering how he could possibly fit into Asami's lifestyle.

"Poor little puppy," she murmured.

Before he could ask what she meant, she said "A year-and-a-half ago, I would never have imagined we'd be standing where we are today. He's a remarkable young man."

Asami raised one brow in an elegant arc.

"It's a lesson," he said, "to never underestimate the fierce determination of puppies."

"Noted." Nagato laughed. "But there's an interesting contrast here."

She walked across the room, and Asami followed her to a wall where the photos of children from Akihito's most recent trip were hung seemingly indiscriminately among photos of children of wealthy Tokyo families. Asami watched her frown as she tried to understand the sweetly devious purpose of that wall.

"Shall I tell you how he explained it to me?" Asami asked.

"Please."

"You know that while Takaba is here in Tokyo, he is in high demand as a child portrait photographer?"

She nodded.

"He can name his price," Asami went on. "He uses the money from those sessions to finance his trips abroad. I've offered to pay his expenses rather than have him pander to the wealthy and elite, but he said to me that he likes doing it. He enjoys the company of children. And when they come to his studio, they see this wall with photos of children from all over the world and they ask about them and he tells them about these other children that he has met and how they are more alike than they are different, and they leave here with that little seed that he has planted in their fertile little brains."

Asami bent to Nagato's ear.

"He's a very clever little puppy," he said.

She smiled and shook her head. "He really is full of surprises."

"You have no idea," Asami said. "Now, let me get you something to drink."

"Nothing sweet," she said.

"Of course not."

He took her at her word and ordered a single malt scotch at the little bar that had been set up in the corner. Tumbler in hand, he turned and bumped squarely into Takaba Daichi.

"My apologies."

Asami bowed and Takaba Sr. returned it stiffly.

"I was at fault."

They were boxed into the corner by the press of the crowd, staring awkwardly past each other, waiting for an escape route to open up. They had not met or spoken since that day at Nagato's clinic where they had made a wartime alliance. Now in peacetime, the alliance had crumbled.

"You must be very proud," Asami said to fill the blank between them.

"Of course I am."

"He rose back up all on his own," Asami said. "You got what you wanted."

Takaba Sr.'s brows came together over narrowed eyes.

"I got half of what I wanted," he said in a low voice.

So there was to be no ceasefire here. Those words were a warning shot, but Asami knew he had the advantage of position. He smiled.

"That's more than most men can say."

"Except you," Takaba Sr. growled. "You got more than you deserve."

For a moment, Asami considered informing the other man just exactly how much he got on a regular basis but thought better of it.

"That's quite true," he said. "Do you expect me to deny it?"

Hard lines deepened on Takaba Sr.'s face.

"I may have no choice but to tolerate you now," he said, "but I will never stop hoping that he comes to his senses and leaves you."

You had to admire that blunt, straightforward Takaba style. All the same, Asami registered a strange little stab of something…almost painful. Not for himself. He didn't care what this man thought of him for his own sake, but he did care very much about someone else.

"We all have our dreams." Asami looked again across the studio to where Akihito was talking animatedly, his hands flying. "Let me ask you this, Takaba-san. What do you think _he_ hopes for?"

As though he felt the pull of their eyes, Akihito turned, saw them standing together and his face split into one of his piercingly guileless smiles.

"You fight dirty," his father said.

"When the stakes are this high, yes."

"What stakes?" Takaba Sr. suddenly grasped the sleeve of Asami's jacket. "You could have anyone you wanted. Why him? What is he to you?"

Asami looked at the other man without seeing him, lost in a quick storm of memories, of things that could not be expressed in words and those that could only be whispered into one man's ear.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he said, and then gods help him, he couldn't resist adding, "Now, if you'll forgive me, I think I'll take Akihito home. Come and see us sometime. You and your wife are always welcome."

He delivered the drink to Nagato, and then made his way across the studio to Akihito, cutting a dark, focused swath through the crowd, the little jet of spleen that had fueled his words dying down. The truth was that he couldn't blame Akihito's father. He knew the man's objections weren't driven by bigotry but by the fact that he stood in direct opposition to the world Asami—and now his son—inhabited. But that didn't mean Asami was prepared to surrender. He couldn't give up what he had fought so hard for, when the stakes that he had refused to name could carry him to heaven or to hell.

###

It was around two when they got home, early still by Asami's standards. Home now was in Meguro—another penthouse; Asami didn't seem able to breathe at the level of ordinary men, and a penthouse offered the minimum of required security. Akihito's long-ago vow that one day he would get to the top and support Asami went up in smoke and a sublet of his apartment; the idea of Asami with his chauffeur-driven limo and hand-tailored suits living in Shimokitazawa being patently ridiculous.

Akihito slipped off his shoes and trailed Asami to the bedroom, his head swimming pleasantly with beer and good will, but not so much that he didn't notice that Asami had been kind of preoccupied on the way back. Akihito had a niggling idea of why.

"What did you and my dad talk about tonight?" he asked.

Asami shrugged out of his jacket, hung it in the closet and turned, fiddling with his cufflinks.

"Fortunes of war," he said.

Akihito frowned.

"There's a war?"

Asami looked at him for a moment and then thoughtfully dropped his cufflinks into a small bowl on the dresser.

"Wait here for me a moment," he said. "I have something I want to give you."

Sighing, Akihito sat on the end of the bed. He thought they'd settled it between them, Asami giving him stuff. The things he needed or wanted, he earned. Except for the gold pendant around his neck. He reached up and touched it, warm from the heat of his body. The necklace was different, though. It meant something. It was important.

He didn't have to wonder for long, though. Asami was back in a few moments, carrying a large, thick sheaf of paper, bound in wire and blue paper. He dropped it unceremoniously into Akihito's lap.

"Oof! Ouch, Asami! That's heavy!" He looked at the book in his lap. "What is this? More abandoned lovers?"

"No," Asami said. "It's a statement of my holdings and business interests."

"I'm never going to get flowers, am I?" Akihito turned back the front cover and leafed through a few pages of mostly legal gobbledygook and rafts of numbers. "Does this have something to do with my dad? Is this to prove what a good provider you are?" He laughed. "Are you going to propose?"

"If I did, you'd spontaneously combust on the spot."

"I'd give you a knee kick first."

"Let's save the foreplay for later," Asami said.

Akihito flipped to the back of the book. Nearly four hundred pages!

"You are seriously sadistic if you expect me to read this whole thing."

"If I wanted to torture you," Asami said, "you know I have far more pleasurable methods at hand. No, this isn't sadism. It's an offer."

"It's a doorstop." Akihito flopped the book onto the bed.

"Actually, it contains a plan to divest my holdings of all illegal connections over a period of no less than four years."

That cut right through Akihito's mild little buzz.

"You mean you're going legit?"

"I've been largely 'legit,' as you put it, for some years now," Asami said. "There are…associations, shall we say, that have made it easier for me to operate on a scale that suited me. It's those connections that would be severed."

"So you're going to go straight?"

"In a manner of speaking."

It was a lot to take in, more than could be bound inside four hundred pages. Black ink on paper couldn't contain the world that Asami inhabited, that had made him who he was. Akihito reached out and smoothed his hand across the cover of the book.

"Wouldn't you…miss it?"

Asami, still leaning casually against the dresser, gave him a curious look.

"Miss it?"

"I mean, there has to be a reason why you got mixed up in this kind of stuff in the first place. Did you like it? Or did you not have any other choice? You've never told me."

"I'm not sure I even remember."

Akihito was almost certain that was a lie.

"Does it matter now?" Asami asked.

It did, but Akihito was afraid to say why. He picked up the book again and held it in his lap. In the background of the happiness of these last six months had been the low hum of fear, that dark edge of Asami's lifestyle that promised that one day, it would all blow up. It was part of what drove Akihito in his own work, part of what made him close his eyes and live in the present, shutting out thoughts that it would not, could not last. That the one thing Asami could not promise him or offer to buy was the future. But here it was, in his hand, the closest thing to hope he could imagine. And yet…

"If this is who you are," he said quietly, "I don't want to be the reason you change."

Asami snorted softly, a wry smile bending the corner of his mouth.

"Don't mistake this for a selfless act," he said. "If I were a yakuza or syndicate leader, it would be difficult if not impossible for me to walk away, but that all-or-nothing mentality has never appealed to me. I like to think I'm more creative than that. I've structured my work so that when I was done—and I always planned to end it at some point, Akihito—I could walk away without leaving a power vacuum that would cause problems for my associates and just enough ammunition to keep the larger players in line. I'm simply moving up the timeline."

This was more than an extravagant, useless gift. It was too much. The scale of it frightened him.

"Yeah, but—"

Finally, Asami pushed away from the dresser and came and knelt before him, his finger on Akihito's lips.

"No buts," he said. "I told you once that you owe me lifetimes."

"Actually," Akihito said, "you've told me that over and over."

"Stop nitpicking." Asami took the book out of Akihito's hands and tossed it onto the floor. "The fact is that I intend to be around to collect every single one."

"Is that in the plan, too?"

"It's the whole point of the plan," Asami said, "even if I didn't know it when it was originally drawn up. So you see, you aren't the reason, Akihito. You're the reward."

Was that better? He wasn't sure, but he was being pushed back onto the bed, Asami prowling over him cat-like, unbuttoning his shirt and bending to brand hot kisses down his neck. Plans, objections, everything else pushed aside by the feel of Asami's hands on his skin, slipping beneath the silk and sliding around his torso to stroke his back. Akihito flung his arms around Asami's shoulders and arched into his touch. Maybe there was a future. Maybe there wasn't. Here and now was worth anything. He would take whatever came.

 **The End**

* * *

 **A/N:** Sorry to have been so late in wrapping this up. I have been dragging my feet-I think-because I didn't want to be finished with this story! I have loved working on it so much, and I'm so grateful for everyone who has read along with me. I have loved hearing from all of you. Thank you for taking time to leave comments for me! And a huge thank you to Yamane Ayano for creating such inspiring, adorable and unbelievably hot characters!


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